Chapter 5
5
The trail leading towards the mountain pass wasn’t as bad as some of the girl’s fretting had made her believe. And, all in all, it was a pleasant ride through the country side. She was able to just hang back and watch the pines and ferns drifting by. The sun’s rays streaked down illuminating the various nameless gnats into balls of luminous light, that went dancing around her head and the whole scene was permeated with the pleasantly antiseptic scent of the pine trees.
Before long the pass began to widen and they came to a picturesque little valley carpeted in drowsy meadow sweet and soft green grass. Dusted and hoary butterflies flitted this way and that amongst the wildflowers that nodded in the glade. They galloped across and reached the other side of the glade in seconds. This little taste of riding got their appetite up.
“I know,” shouted Amelia. “Why don’t we have a race?”
They all lined up at the widest part of the valley, a place where the glade rose up a steep incline and terminated at a barbed wire fence. “We’ll race up to the tree line,” said Amelia. “And back again.”
“Anastasia is going to win,” said Annette. “Her horse is the fastest.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. Okay, everyone line up.” And when everyone was in position, she said. “Ready? Go!”
They all shot off across the glade once more. Anastasia kicked her heels lightly against Chimera’s side and he carried her swiftly up to the tree line overtaking the lead horses as he went. She could hear Amelia cursing and striking her horse harshly with her whip, but it was no use; she was back down at the far end of the glade without a hope of being caught.
The girls dismounted under a grove of nearby apple trees and tied up their horses. Then, they all went into the forest towards the rush and gush of water. There amongst the trees a wide, fast-flowing stream bubbled up from a circular hole in the ground. While she stood watching the powerful flow of water, the girls made a great show of getting changed, which they said needed to happen quickly, before “that creep” Mr. Bulwark came around. He had left them go on up the trail alone. Being the most senior of the scout groups had to count for something, sometime.
Before long, all the girl’s were paddling by the deep pool, on the water’s edge. All except for Annette and herself.
“Aren’t you getting in?”
She shook her head. “No, too cold.”
“Why don’t you come with me instead?”
“Where are you going?”
They walked back out into the bright sunlight and Anastasia looked up at the surrounding mountains to where she had seen the Old Indian cave. “Up there,” she said pointing.
“You, you mean Otaktay’s cave? But we can’t go up there. It’s forbidden.”
She remembered her dream the night before; about how she had come so close to reaching the further shore and had failed. She would not let that happen again; she had a date with knowledge, as Don Juan would say.
“Well, you can stay here,” she called back “I’m going up there one way or another.”
Annette stood on the edge of the forest for a moment hesitating and then cried out. “Wait for me Anastasia, I’m coming too…”
The revelations concerning Harmon’s dream did not cease upon awakening, but continued to unfold, as he realised yet more connections to history, art and literature. In particular, he noticed how his dream closely mirrored those described in the great 13th Century work of poetry The Divine Comedy, by Danté. In the poem, Danté, accompanied by the poetic wizard Virgil, journeys into Limbo, which is described as a dark and rocky wasteland, just like the one he had experienced on the surface of the Sun. According to Virgil, this is the First Circle of Hell and reserved for souls whose only real sin was to being born before the widespread availability of Christian baptismal rites. Here he describes having met with famous historical figures like; Caesar, Socrates, Aristotle and Homer. Was it possible that both he and Danté had been witness to the same place and time and if so, did this provide some sort of proof for the existence of an afterlife; a place where souls went based upon their past transgressions or favourable moral worth; and there to await the Final Judgement?
From a scientific point of view, at least, Harmon couldn’t see why not. His experience, after all, had been an honest observation, and one which had been corroborated centuries earlier. If this were true and the Nine Circles of Hell were indeed a stark reality, then based on his own understanding, those infernal realms did not — as had been previously supposed — exist in the ground under our feet, but rather in the sky above our heads and on the surface of the Sun. This, in its own way, also made sense, for wasn’t Hell said to be a place where the souls of the damned burnt for all eternity? And what was the Sun if not for a giant ball of burning hydrogen? It’s own giant Inferno? But then, if this were so and the afterlife and God did exist, then that obviously meant that the Devil and eternal damnation must exist also.
It was a sobering thought, that in this age of drunkenness, few seldom permitted themselves to have.
The beginning of the climb was characterised by tall, straight pine trees that went up sixty feet above their heads. Surprisingly, however, these great structures did not provide the girls with much shade and the sun beat down upon their backs causing them to overheat and to sweat profusely. Consequently they were set upon by a swarm of midges that flittered around their heads and caused them gross irritation. But worst of all was the thick undergrowth, which on several occasions forced them to turn around and in search of an alternate route.
Annette sat down on the dusty path to take a break. “Can we go back now?” she asked.
She looked back at the thick brush and the scree field only thirty metres away, which signified the boundary of the forest. I’m so close, she thought, there’s no way I’m turning back now. “Listen, you wait here… I’m just going to take a quick look and then I’ll be straight back. OK?”
Annette did not reply, but simply started to unpack her lunch from her bag.
She did not waste any time. She hurried up the last stretch and quickly found her way through the bracken and onto the scree field beyond. It was so silent up here, it felt like a distant, alien planet. A blackbird lifted up from between the fallen boulders and perched itself on a nearby holly tree. It gave her a fright and in that moment reminded her of the fear meditations Ms. Lytton had encouraged her to do the day before. The idea of promoting fear as a way of life would have appeared to her an anathema under any other circumstances. But she so desperately wanted to succeed as a Nargual and have the other girls respect her that she was willing to do almost anything. And if Ms. Lytton had told her to do it there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with it, now could there?
She continued to harbour her feelings of unease as she stopped by the holly tree, but quickly forgot all about it as she noted the addition of red berries on the branches. How odd, she thought, as she had never seen a holly tree bearing fruit in midsummer and she suspected few people had. She picked some of the red orbs and spiny leaves and carefully deposited them in her pocket before she carried on. The mouth of the cave was not far away now, but the way up to it was treacherous and the going was slow. At this rate, she’d never get there.
Just then she noticed something unusual up ahead. Winding its way through the rocks was a deep groove. She dropped down onto the dry, dusty earth and followed its snaking course around white boulders smoothened with time, until she came face to face with the cave entrance itself. She hesitated a while on the threshold. There’s nothing to be afraid of Anastasia, she reminded herself. The cave stood empty, but it nevertheless showed obvious signs of former habitation. For one thing there was a dark circle on the floor, where a fire had been set many times. Maybe someone was still living here? On the walls she noticed strange petroglyphs carved into the rock. One of these reminded her of the diagram David had drawn of the different densities, only it had the addition of some strange lines and characters that she didn’t understand. Had Otaktay drawn these, she wondered? Yes, she thought, he is everywhere around this place…
She took out the sprig of holly leaves and left it on a rock near the entrance way. It was her gift to him; her way of telling him that she was grateful for all that he had done for her.
Time to get back, she thought; Annette would be looking for her. She passed out of the mouth of the cave quickly and down the winding path.
Being alone made it easier for her to manifest the frequencies of fear needed for her meditations, she noted. She put herself on edge by imagining that at any moment and around any corner Otaktay, or someone else, might jump out at her and grab her. Presently, she emerged back into the forest. She moved silently up behind Annette and did not say anything and simply waited for her to turn around.
“My God, don’t do that…”
“Do what?”
“You know exactly what… Sneak up on me like that…”
She smiled.
“You scared the life out of me…”
Just then they heard a galloping sound across glade. Looking down they were just in time to see Mr. Bulwark racing through the glade on the back of a horse; keeping one hand on his head to secure his ten gallon cowboy hat in place. It was an odd sight to see a man so overweight perched on the back of a horse and one wondered how it was even possibly. But there was no time to consider the physical practicalities of the scene; if they weren’t back soon, he would notice them missing and then there would be trouble.
Minyon said he was calling over and they would go to the club after that, so Harmon decided to stay at home for the rest of the day and work on some paintings. His mind kept going back to the dream he had just awoken from. If the Sun represented the Afterlife; the Underworld to be exact. And if the Underworld, at least according to Danté’s reasoning had 9 levels or strata, then didn’t this mean that the Sun had nine layers also? How many layers did the Sun have officially anyway? He typed it into his computer and discovered that the conventional wisdom on this subject numbered them at five: the core, solar envelope, photosphere, chromosphere and corona. But obviously this was only an estimate, as no-one had ever had gone to the effort of actually opening the Sun up and taking a look inside. Even with the latest solar imaging satellites the best that astronomers and cosmologists could do was look at the heat and radiation coming off the surface of the massive irradiated body. Everything beyond that was only guesswork and conjecture.
This, of course, levelled the playing field in allowing voices, who might otherwise be considered to be uneducated or unworthy, to have their say on the matter. In this case it was the 13th Century poet Danté who had discovered the internal structure of the Sun, albeit unintentionally, when he had had his vision of the Nine Circles of Hell. According to his schema, then, the internal levels of the Sun are nine and were in some way related to the realm of Limbo, and the very human failings of Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Betrayal, respectively. He seemed to recalled that the Ninth Circle of Hell, where Lucifer resided had been described as a circle without a centre. This powerful image brought to his mind the notion of that other behemoth of astronomy, the spacetime singularity or black hole. Was it possible that a black hole existed at the centre of our sun? Certainly, although this would mean that our Sun was a black hole too and that, indeed, all stars were.
Again there was no reason why this could not be so. No one had ever made a proven observation observed of a black hole, and in light of this there was no way to determine what this most curious of celestial objects might look like. For example, it has been suggested that the event horizon of a black hole would not appear black to the naked eye, but would actually be radiating an intense volume of energy; known as Hawking Radiation and, therefore, presumably, would have the same visual appearance of an ordinary star. The gravity well of a black hole would behave very differently, so obviously our sun was not that. But the idea that the Sun might contain a miniature black hole at its centre was certainly not impossible and might itself account for Danté’s Ninth Circle.
Harmon had already visited Limbo and did not intend to probe any deeper than that; not without good reason, at least. He only hoped that his visitation to the realm had been as a tourist and that it was not a taster or prelude to the kind of afterlife he could expect to endure from now to eternity. Either way it was best to stay on the safe side. He thought about saying prayers again and if necessary start going to Church. But, this was never going to happen; even with all the evidence he couldn’t make himself believe it was true.
As they drew nearer, it was clear that something was deeply amiss in the glade. From inside the darkened wood, they could hear the worried voices of the girls, which grew in fervour until they became shouts and screams of terror. Had Mr. Bulwark finally gone mad? Had he lost the run of himself and his despicable urges? There was literally no telling what might present itself to them in there.
Anastasia was first inside. She saw Mr. Bulwark bending down over one of the girls. She appeared lifeless and he was leaning down to kiss her. The other girls stood around in a panicked state.”What happened?”
“It’s Wilma. She fell into the current and nearly got swept away.”
“We were lucky that Mr. Bulwark came and pulled her out when he did. Otherwise…” Carol trailed off.
“Do you think she’ll be alright?”
“How the hell should I know?” returned Amelia.
“Everybody stand back,” shouted Mr. Bulwark. “And give me some room.”
The girls did as they were told and watched Mr. Bulwark placed his two fat lips to Wilma’s mouth and blew. Seconds later, she was coughing ad spluttering the clear spring water from her lungs. The other girls looked at one another in relief.
“How do you feel?” he asked the semi-conscious girl.
She was curious about that herself. She imagined that Wilma was feeling mixed emotions about the whole affair. For a start, she would naturally be appreciative of Mr. Bulwark and the pains that he had gone to in saving her life. On the other hand, she could scarcely imagine that Wilma would be much thrilled to awaken to her prince and to discover instead a ‘frog’. This struck her as being a clever observation in many ways, as there was something definitely toad-like about Mr. Bulwark. Wilma, beautiful as she was in a youthful sort of way and no doubt incredibly wealthy made for an appropriate modern day Princess. However, unlike the famous fairytale, their encounter had produced no positive transformation in Mr. Bulwark; he remained as hideous and fat as ever.
But perhaps this was being unfair. After all, if hadn’t been for him, there really was every possibility that Wilma would have been swept away by the current and drowned. Tales of his heroism, of how he had waded into the water to save her were quick to surface, but it was Wilma who was unsurprisingly showered with the most attention and kindness.
Once they got back to the camp, Wilma was taken off to the nurse and the rest of Form Seven were told to sit on the beach and wait for Ms. Lytton to arrive. They all sat in silence, as Mr. Bulwark paced slowly back and forth across the sand in front of them. Eventually, Ms. Lytton came informed them that Wilma was suffering from mild shock but was recovering nicely. “She’ll stay in the infirmary with Nurse Heavyside and then she should be released later today.”
All of the girls were happy to hear it. When they were done, Anastasia went to see if Wendy had spoken to Valerie on her behalf, as she had promised to do. “So, did you speak to her?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, she’s just a little sore over what happened. She’ll get over it. Anyway, it sounds like your day up at the spring wasn’t so hot…”
“You’re right it wasn’t…”
“Why don’t you come with me into the Meeting Hall, there’s something I wanted to show you…”
She followed Wendy round to the front of the hall and went in through the doors. Inside she saw garlands and leafy green bunting running up and down the length of it. “What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s very impressive. Is this what you did all afternoon?”
“We helped a little. Ben and Mr. Collins did most of it… But that’s not what I wanted to show you,” she said crouching down in front of the stage. “This is…”
In front of her was a small door leading directly under the stage. There were stacks and stacks of blue plastic chairs under there, which created a sort of a tunnel with just big enough for them to crawl through. “Follow me,” said Wendy.
It was dark and dusty inside the labyrinthine cave of old school chairs. Further on towards the back of the stage, the stacks of chairs gave way to boxes and old crates, some of which looked like they hadn’t been opened for decades. “Hey, where are you going?” she called to Wendy who was crawling on out of sight.
She pressed on in the direction of her friend and found her again, prying loose an air vent panel with her finger nails. They climbed out, dusted their hands and knees off and looked around. They were back outside again, close to the back of the Meeting Hall and not far from the beach where they had started.
Harmon went to the door and opened it to admit Minyon. He came in and plonked himself down on a folding chair and started to roll a cigarette. “What’s up?” he asked.
“No complaints. You hungry?”
“Nah…”
“How about a cup of tea?”
“Sure…”
The kettle was broke, so he had to make do with a saucepan. It seemed like a more authentic cup of tea in any case, sort of like the difference between mp3s and vinyl.
“You reading this?” Minyon asked pointing to a book on the table. It was Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
“A bit…”
He had it open now on his lap reading from it. “I’ve dabbled with Tibetan Buddhism myself…” he said flicking through the pages…”
So had everyone it seemed. “Yeah?”
“All about the bardos… You heard of them?”
He admitted he hadn’t.
“Its like a self-contained period of time. But it also has something to do with other universes.”
“Other universes? How does that work?”
“I don’t know, but there are like six universes in total, I think… Buddhist have different meditations they travel to the different bardos. They’re very clever those Buddhist monks.”
He laughed. “And you believe all that?”
“You don’t believe in extra-dimensions?
“What like string theory? Yeah… I believe in that…”
“Here listen to this… ‘a person may know when the time of death is near due to shadows of men on the sky and investigations…’ Weird, huh?”
“Here’s your tea,” he set the tea down on the table next to Minyon’s rolling tobacco. Next to the pouch was a plastic army man in a diving costume. “What’s this?” he asked.
Minyon snatched it from his hands. “Nothing…”
“Still playing with toys?”
“No, mind your own business,” he snapped.
“OK, take it easy…”
“And don’t tell me to take it easy…” he was red now veins pumping in his forehead. Minyon was clearly unhinged. He had always been that way, however, even back in their days at college together in Portland, he’s always been a hot head.
Evening arrived and it was time for the girls to attend the dream workshop again. This time, Anastasia and Wendy arrived early, ahead of the other girls. As soon as they entered, he smiled at her and said, “Congratulations… On passing the Second Gate of Dreaming.”
“But I thought the purpose of the Second Gate was to wake up in a dream?” Intimating she hadn’t done that.
“Well that’s what we say, but the true meaning of the gate is to exercise some degree of control over your dreaming environment… Evidently you did that correct?”
She thought back. “I did walk on water…”
“Well, then there you go then…”
“How exactly do you know when someone has passed a gate or not?” asked Wendy.
“I can see it in your aura,” he explained. “Every time you cross a gate, there is a corresponding change in your unipolar auric field. It begins as a red glow and then changes orange and so on. Yours is yellow at the moment…”
“But how do you see the auras? I mean,” she looked around. “I can’t see anything like that.”
“It is a skill all sorcerer’s must acquire at some point in their training.”
“And will you be teaching it to us?”
“I should think so, yes.”
“In ‘Tales of Power’… Don Juan kept mentioning something about the need for a warrior to acquire energy for dreaming. Is that the same type of energy you are taking about…”
“No, there’s two types of energy. One is called Vril energy that’s what we call it when it is freely available and the other is sec, when it is bound up inside of a person.”
“So where do we get this Vril?”
“There’s lots of energy sources…” By now the rest of the girls had taken their seats around the room and David put it to them. “Can anybody here answer Anastasia’s question?”
“What was the question?” asked Valerie.
“How does a sorcerer obtain energy for dreaming?”
“A sorcerer can only obtain energy by passing through the six stages of dreaming,” said Valerie.
“Not so, there are other ways that sorcerers can obtain energy. Lades for instance…”
“What are lades?”
He pointed to a framed atlas hanging on the wall. “They are places were energy lines converge on the surface of Earth. Can anyone name for me a prominent place of power?”
“The Bermuda Triangle?”
“That’s correct. The Bermuda Triangle is a liminal realm where the divide between this density and the next is thin. In fact it is so thin that ships and aircraft have been known to go missing there from time to time.”
“But that’s just a story isn’t it?”
“No, on the contrary, it is very real. Entire squadrons have been lost in that region and the rescue planes that went to look for them were all swallowed up also. Often it is said that lights in the sky accompany these odd disappearances.”
“UFOs?”
“That’s right, sorcerers can always find places of power by following these lights, as they are known to refuel their engines at lade nodes.”
“But why do sorcerer’s need to get energy in this way?” queried Anastasia.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, don’t we, as human beings have an unlimited amount of spiritual energy?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, don’t we all have immortal souls?”
“Do we?”
Anastasia looked around nervously. “That’s what I was told at least…”
“There’s no God Anastasia… I’ve looked around… so I think I’d know.”
The other girls laughed at this and made her feel stupid.
“The only way to gain everlasting forever is to obtain energy through dreaming and cross over into the Fifth Density before death. That is the entire point of the Dream Workshops and why Camp Calapuyau was set up in the first place…”
“So, if a person crosses all of the gates and unlocks their energy chakras, will they have enough energy to get to the Fifth Density?”
“For a while maybe, but the energy body does not have the proper reserves to keep you there indefinitely. That’s why we have to make do with other means… But we will get to them in time… Right now I want you all to concentrate on your dreaming practices, Anastasia here is catching up with you.”
There was a sharp in draw of breath amongst the class. “You mean?”
“That’s right. She’s crossed the second gate.”
“But how is that possible?” groaned Annette. “She’s only a half-blood.”
“Half-bloods are capable of mastering dreaming, but it usually requires of them a little more effort.” he paused to meditate, “Unless she is getting help from someone…”
“Is that possible?”
“Of course, all Narguals have their allies or spirit guides to help them.”
Being told that a spirit entity was making its way into her dreams at night without her permission made her feel distinctly uneasy. But, it was less about consent and more about her feelings of hurt pride. She wanted to achieve the different stages all by herself, rather than being the unwitting pawn being moved about the chess board by some unseen hand.
Harmon and Minyon made there way down to the Cascade Bar. It was filled with the usual crowd of geeks and misfits; eating pizza, drinking beer and playing board games from their childhood. His sister, spotted him from behind the bar and came over to talk with him. “Hey little bro,” she said. “Long time no see.”
“Hey…”
“Do you want a beer or some pizza?”
“A beer maybe, sure. I had lunch already…”
“Sure, ok then. Oh by the way, there was a pig in here looking for you today…”
“Oh yeah…”
“Yeah… He was asking about some graffiti?”
He nodded his head.
“Don’t be writing weird shit around town anymore. OK?”
“How’d you know I did it?”
She cocked her head and looked at him. “Because you wrote the same shit on a stall in the toilet, here one night.”
“Oh yeah.” He had forgotten about that.
A moment later his beer arrived and Harmon went off to look for Minyon who was nowhere to be seen. Not that that mattered much. The entire establishment was crawling with drunks who were willing to start a conversation with you at a moments notice.
He went outside into the smoking area outback and someone passed him a joint. “You’re Benjamin’s friend aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought I recognised you…”
“Harmon,” he said taking a blast of the joint.
“Paul…”
“That’s right.”
“So what do you do?”
“I paint.”
“Oh I see. Where do you get your inspiration from?”
“Lucid dreaming mostly…”
“Interesting. Say, I had a dream the other night…” For some reason, he knew what was coming, before he said it. “I was standing on the surface of the sun with all of these old philosophers types with me, like Plato and Aristotle…”
“I-I had exactly the same dream…”
Paul smiled at him.
“No seriously. It was just this morning. You were standing on the sun right? But it looked exactly like this.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it wasn’t all on fire and the rest.”
“Right.”
“And you met with the Plato and Aristotle. I was in the exact same place…” Here then was definitive proof in his mind of the objective truth, not only in the visionary power of dreams, but in the existence of the afterlife. But what did it mean? He felt as though this chance meeting with Paul was more than just coincidence. The universe was trying to tell him something.
But what? How was it possible for souls to exist on the surface of the sun without burning up? Did they exist on a higher energy frequency? If so then what did ordinary matter look like to them. He recalled how Earth and the other planets looked exactly as you would expect them to look in the night sky, like luminous stars or planetoids. In general the source of this illumination was the sun, but in the dream that both he and Paul had experienced this was clearly impossible, as the Sun had grown dim in both instances. Unless he thought, the light from the sun was somehow polarised in that dimension, so that it was invisible to the viewer on the way out, and its effect only showed up on the way back.
This concept interested him greatly. Imagine a light that you could shine in your face, without blinding yourself, but which still had the effect of illuminating everything around you.
But the more he thought about it though, the less it made any sense. It seemed contradictory that the effects of a light source could be seen without the source itself being detected in some way. However, he didn’t think that this apparent contradiction detracted in any way from the veracity of the theory as a whole. Not everything had to make sense of have a logical explanation, especially when dealing with substances and phenomena which existed and had their beginnings beyond the bounds of ordinary space.
The school bell rang and Anastasia left her classroom and crossed the little enclosed garden into the concourse. From out of the usual milieu of students, she saw Wendy walking towards her with a singular intent. She looked at her with a strange and powerful look in her green eyes. She was no longer the slightly naive girl that she had come to know and Anastasia now saw her for what she truly was: A powerful Nargual.
Wendy came up and put her righthand on Anastasia’s left shoulder and her lefthand on her waist. “Close your eyes and follow my lead,” she said.
She did as she was commanded and felt her friend leading her backwards through the room. A jolt of energy collided with her and Wendy changed coarse; pushing her in a slightly different direction, whereupon she felt another jolt of energy. Although she did not know the purpose or destination of their meandering path, it was clear by now that Wendy was guiding her through a series of energy nodes or gateways that only she could see. She noticed that the gateways entered her back around the left shoulder blade and while she was unable to directly perceive the energy nodes (or lades) with her eyes, she was beginning to get a sense of their approach. It felt like a large buzzing orb that grew in intensity the closer she got to it.
It overtook her and she exploded. In that instant, she was transported into a glittering realm with gigantic tubular promontories, coloured in the complete spectral range and erupting upwards in every direction. It was breathtaking like a display of slow motion fireworks going off everywhere around her. This was Empiricus; the Ninth Density; a realm of pure energy that underlay all things that David had spoken to her of. So everything they said was true; the Densities did exist. It was clear now that Wendy’s efforts at forcing her through the various energy gates had given her enough energy to experience this density directly. But even now she could feel her grip upon this most exalted of realities dwindling. She wanted to remain in this glittering realm forever, but she found the more she desired of it, the faster the vision faded away.
Having glimpsed the true nature of the universe, if even for a moment had transfixed her and now nothing less would do than to experience that vision once more in perpetuity. However, it was not to be and neither, clearly was it her decision to make. The great promontories began to slow and condense into the heavier and more familiar patterns of base reality. The resulting scene she recognised as her own dorm room. She looked around her and saw the room was filled with the still sleeping forms of her fellow girl scouts. Next to her, lying asleep in her bed was a face she could scarcely fail to recognise, but which nevertheless for some reason seemed strange to her. She sat on her the side of her bed and took in the slightly pudgy features of her sleeping face and marvelled at the wonder and eccentricity of it all.
Breakfast on this morning consisted of two slices of brown toast, an apple and a carton of juice. As usual, Anastasia sat with Wendy in the little picnic area outside the tuck shop. She was very excited to tell her friend all about the dream she had; fully expecting her to have had the same dream herself. “I dreamt about you last night…”
Wendy looked up with a confused expression. “That’s funny, I don’t even remember my dream.”
“But you must… You were at my school…”
“Where’s your school?”
“Back in Albany…” she got the sense that Wendy was playing with her now. “Never mind all that. You were there and you helped me to see through the energy gates…”
“Did I? I don’t know… I remember something about my mom and a cake, I think… Was that part of it?”
“No…” She was beginning to think that she was completely wrong about the whole affair. Maybe the person who had helped her in the dream the night before was not Wendy after all. Perhaps her Spirit Guide had taken on Wendy’s form inside the dreamworld. It was entirely possible that merely by setting out on her journey of discovery into the realm of dreaming she had prompted one or other spiritual beings from the void to take up the role of her mentor. It might have been Eamon Radcliffe or Don Juan or even Carlos Castaneda himself, she thought.
There was, of course, one other contender for her ally and perhaps the most obvious one; Otaktay. She had seen him standing at the window at the start of her dreaming practice, no doubt trying to make some kind of telepathic connection with her. It was also possible that the Buddhist monk she had seen was her mentor. She recalled how she had nearly drowned on that occasion, just as Wilma had done earlier that day. It seemed like too much of a coincidence.
“What class do we have now?”
“Art History and Appreciation…”
“We’ll probably just have to walk around the museum looking at the artefacts again.”
“I know… Can’t wait…”
“Do you really like that stuff?”
“Sure.”
“It gives me the creeps,” she said and shivered.
They arrived at the museum and Ben led the class around asking them to look at and pay close attention to the various themes expressed in the works. It didn’t take long for her to get a sense of what Wendy was talking about. There was something definitely unnerving about some of the old Indian artefacts, in particular the ceremonial masks of the Haida tribe, which appeared monstrous in aspect mixing human and animal facial features. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these masks was how the makers had seen fit to incorporated real life human hair into them.
At one point, she and Wendy were examining pestle used for grinding seeds that had two distinct carvings of animal heads on it. Ben explained that one of the heads was that of a killer whale, while the other was an eagle and that the fin of the whale doubled as the wing of the bird. On another occasion, they were standing next to a stone carving of what looked like a man embracing a child, but when looked at from the front the true nature of the act was revealed. She was stunned and repulsed, she had no idea that pedophilia was such a prominent part of Native American life in the old times. Ben explained how this was an aspect of dual the representation common in their culture. She felt that it was simply despicable and barbaric. She couldn’t wait to get out of there, away from the blood beating drum of sacrifice.
Clearly not everything about the past was as rose tinted as she had been led to believe, there were injustices and hardships in those times just as there were in ours. Consequently, this made her feel better about the type of civilisation she belonged to. For all its faults, and some would say they were many, American life and society did not, thankfully, promote institutionalised child sex abuse or the ritual murder of slaves to appease the Gods, as it appeared the Tlingit people did, once upon a time.
The road into the golf club snaked round before depositing Walter and his car in the parking lot, next to the dark wooden facade of the clubhouse. He could see Stolz and Kevin standing beside their cars getting their clubs ready. He had a plaid golf bag with a set of ageing clubs flung into the back seat.
“That’s quite a set you’ve got there…” said Stolz, when he saw them. “Were they your mother in laws?”
“Actually they were my Grandmother’s,” he said slamming the trunk down; he didn’t care, he like his grandmother.
“Hang on a second… that’s actually quite a nice driver,” Stolz said lifting it out of the bag and examining it. “I might have a go of that when we’re out on the course.”
“How do you get to it anyway?”
“It’s just through here. That’s the clubhouse down there if you want to take a look.”
“Maybe later…”
“How much does membership cost in a place like this anyhow?”
“Upwards of ten grand a year.”
“That’s steep…”
“Yeah, well I mean look at the place it is worth every penny, isn’t?” The golf course was positioned in a green belt on the far side of the river and had a view over the entire town of Albany; It certainly was picturesque, he thought. He was given the honour of teeing off first. He took a few practice shots and then smacked the ball high into the air.
“Nice shot…”
It landed near the green and rolled back several feet. Not bad was right…
Kevin went next, but managed to send it off left, while Stolz delivered his ball directly onto the green and stopped dead. “Not bad, heh?”
“No, not bad at all…” he admitted.
As they walked along, Stolz wasted no time in bringing up the real reason why they were out here in the first place. “So Kevin. Did you here about the little scrape that Walter got into earlier in the week?”
“No…” replied Kevin with a look of concern.
“It was nothing really…”
“Nothing? I wouldn’t say that… He had the Mayor of Albany and a State Senator breathing down my neck and looking for your badge…” he pointed at gloved finger in his direction.
“So what happened? I mean what did you do?”
“Nothing. I told him that Walt was a credit to the force, which he is — most of the time. When he’s not out investigating missing persons cases…”
“Which case was it?”
Stolz growled. “You should know, you probably assigned it to him…”
“What?”
“That’s what you do isn’t it? Feed him our boy intel for his little investigations into the fantasy realm of the paranormal.”
“I wouldn’t call three hundred missing children cases a year fantasy,” he protested.
“That’s within statistical probability for the state…”
“Way off and you know it…”
“OK, but without a perpetrator what are you left with? Nothing concrete, nothing tangible…”
“Alright, but we still had dirt on Sharpton. The guy was clearly bent and you let him off.”
“He’s a journalist. So he makes up a story or two. What’s to be done about it?”
“Look… The fact remains that we have an epidemic of missing persons cases on our hands. There were eighteen cases in the last week alone…”
“Seventeen,” said Kevin eyeing the ball, for another shot.
“What?”
“There were seventeen children confirmed missing last week.”
“There you see… Not as bad as you think…”
“Your figures are wrong…”
“No,” said Kevin. “One of the missing kids turned up, last night…”
“Which one?”
“Look, never mind which one…” complained Stolz.
But it was too late, Kevin had already said it. “The Barker boy…”
He tried to think of who he meant. The Barker boy? He couldn’t remember that specific case. “OK, so one of them returned home…”
“Well, not exactly home he’s in the Samaritan.”
“Look, no one is saying that there isn’t something fishy going on all right,” conceded Stolz. “But you can’t expect me to waste police man hours chasing ghosts and spooks and things that go bump in the night, can you?”
“No of course not, I just think that it should be kept as an open investigation and if people want to investigated they should…”
“Yeah, well that’s not how it works in our precinct, and going around hassling young reporters who are just trying to do their job isn’t par for the course neither.”
“Well, don’t worry, it won’t happen again…”
“You see that it doesn’t…”
Stolz had lured them both out here on the pretext of a game of golf just to further chastise them. He should have been more angry about it, but had learnt something very important, during this afternoon’s mismatch. This was the magic pill he’d been looking for. If he could get an interview with this Barker boy, he could find out what he’s seen and with it he could potentially crack this whole case wide open. And for that, he was more than happy to play through the back nine pretending like he cared, one way or another, about the outcome of the game…
* * *
A strange new object had appeared in the camp and consisted of a wooden frame covered over with chicken wire and which housed a single two stroke out-board motor propped up on a stick. The dimensions of the cage were about three feet in height, by three feet in length and one and a half feet wide. The base of the enclosure was padded with sawdust. “What the hell is this?”
“Maybe it’s a generator,” ventured Wendy.
“Doesn’t the camp have its own power supply?”
“Yeah, well there’s another one over there,” Wendy pointed behind her.
“They’re all over the place. How come we never noticed them before?”
“They’re new… They might be some kind of game for the juniors.”
She nodded her head. It certainly was plausible, she recalled her time at girl scouts engaged in similar activities, which when viewed from the perspective of the uninitiated, would appear completely irrational. Maybe it was something like that. Either way, she imagined that they would find out in time.
“Here you don’t think this has anything to do with the janitor do you?”
“Mr. Haight? Maybe, I guess.”
“Come on lets get out of here. I don’t want another telling off.”
“Where will we go?”
“Why don’t we go up and see the boys?”
“Is that allowed?”
“Well, it’s not exactly forbidden if that’s what you mean…”
They left the road, crossed over a stream and then started climbing upwards through a forest of tall conifers. It wasn’t long before they reached the seven or eight wooden cabins of the boy’s dorm rooms. They were much the same as their own dorms, only they required thick wooden stilts to keep them level on the hillside. This additional factor consequently made the place seem more dynamic and she thought that she would much rather be spending the night up here among the trees than plodding along on the positively pedestrian valley floor.
At the centre of the boy’s camp, they found Alex and Marvin, the two boys she had met on the first day. They were standing around and seemingly instructing the other younger boys in the use of makeshift bow and arrows. This surprised her, as she half envisaged the boy’s camp to be more reminiscent of a scene from William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies’. She realised that she was basing this assumption off of how Valerie and the other girls had treated her so far. She was therefore more than a bit ashamed of herself and her bias, when she saw that the boys were actually more genuinely inclusive and supportive of each other than the girls had ever professed themselves to be. This feeling of inclusivity was not simply limited to the boys however, because as soon as Alex was finished demonstrating the use of the bow and arrow by striking a paint can with deadly accuracy half way across the camp, he dropped what he was doing and went to meet with them.
“Anastasia, you remember Alex don’t you?” asked Wendy.
“Sure I do.”
“And Marvin.”
“Of course…” The four of them began walking up the hill and split into pairs, with Wendy and Alex up front and Marvin and her trailing behind. “This is some place you have here…” She said trying to break the awkward silence.
“We try to run a tight ship…”
“I can see that…”
“Have you ever been to any other camps, growing up? Girl scouts that sort of thing?”
“Sure, I did joined the Girl Guides for a while.”
“In Salem?”
“No, in Albany…”
“Oh…”
“Camp Calapuyau is the best honestly…” He sounded like he was selling something, now. “Are you looking forwards to crossing into the Fifth Density?”
“I don’t know…”
“It’s going to be awesome… You get to meet with your Spiritual Family, your real family.”
“I don’t know, I mean I already have a real family… My dad, at least…”
“Your Third Density family aren’t your real family…”
She stayed quiet; she wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. Just then, Wendy returned to bail her out, or at least that’s what she thought would happen .
“Anastasia doesn’t believe in the Fifth Density…” she said.
Alex and Marvin both regarded her with equal measures of shock.
“Actually that’s not true anymore… I saw something last night, something I can’t explain… Remember, I told you at breakfast this morning?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I did. About how you showed me the different energy gates…”
“Oh, I remember…”
“… Then I entered a glittering void-thing,” she continued.
“Wow, Empiricus… Your friend here has some excellent dreaming skills…”
“Don’t I know it,” said Wendy smiling.
“Hey, Anastasia, did you ever attend something called the GATE classes?”
“You mean the dream workshops?”
“No, this is something Marvin saw on the internet. He thinks that everyone who attends Camp Calapuyau were once belonging to these weird aptitude classes.”
“Well, sorry not me…”
“Weird…”
“It stands for Gifted and Talented Education…” said Alex. “You must have attended it, you’re the right age…”
“Hang on a sec,” that did ring a bell. “I remember some classes in kindergarten. We were made go and take these weird tests. Only it wasn’t called GATE, it was TAG.”
“Yeah, it’s different in some states.”
The violent resurgence of repressed memories made her go off and seek the solitude of a felled log. She remembered her teacher was this tall German lady named Mrs Krugg and how all of the classes were conducted seemingly in secret with the blinds drawn. Images of the terrified faces of classmates flashed before her eyes and on the black board she remembered a set of about eight or nine concentric rings; a map of the Densities of the Universe. My God, she thought, was it all true? Was she actually a child from another universe, with another family and identity apart from her own?
Just then Wendy came up to her. “A-are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just a bit…”
“I know it’s OK, you don’t have to explain… It can be all a bit much, when you realise what’s going on… But don’t worry, you’re going to have a wonderful time…”
“I don’t know… I mean…”
“Here, listen… Don’t think about it… I’ve got something important to tell you…”
“What?”
“Anastasia, you like Alex, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he’s over there, waiting behind that shed for you…”
She was surprised at how quickly her friend pulled strings for her.
“He’s over there now?”
“Yes,” she said picking her up and pushing her in that direction. “Go to him…”
She didn’t need much encouragement. She walked around the back of the shed and there he was. “Hi…” he said.
“Hi…”
“So, how do you want to do this?”
“I don’t know… In the usual way…”
“Have you ever done this before…”
She thought back to Kirk. “Sure, have you?”
“Sure…”
“Well, then…”
She stepped forwards into his embrace. The kiss was fine, but nothing to write home about. But what really did it in was how awkward Alex was being. She stopped when her jaw started to get tired and then led the red-faced boy back around the front of the shed, where they went their separate ways.
“So how was it?” asked Wendy.
“It… wasn’t great…”
“No sparks then?”
“She remembered back to the enormous firework display she had seen the night before with Wendy, when she had ventured up to the Ninth Density. When she compared it with that, she had to admit. “No, definitely no sparks…
“You’re sure I can’t coax you back into the clubhouse?” asked Stolz when the game had ended.
“No… I’ve got to be somewhere.”
“Looks like its just me and you Kevin…” he patted him on the back.
Walter went back to his car, threw his clubs in the boot and drove to the Samaritan where his patient; the Rosetta stone of this entire investigation, potentially lay waiting for him. He drove around the hospital grounds and eventually he found the admissions building. Minutes later, he approached the receptionist’s desk and asked her about the Barker boy.
“Are you a relative?”
He showed her his badge.
“Uh-uh… His mother and his grandmother are with him, at the moment,” she lifted the phone. “Room 212…”
He went up in the lift and found the room, way at the back of the hospital. His mother stood up to greet him the minute he knocked on the door. She wiped her hands on her dress, before shaking his hand. She had straight brown hair and a worn-out look upon her face. “My name is Walter Cullen. Do you mind if I have a few words with your son?”
“Of course,” she said, going back to his bedside. “Michael, this man is from the police department. He’d like to ask you a few questions. If that’s alright?”
He nodded weakly from beneath a mesh of intra-venous tubes.
“How are you feeling?”
“Much better thank you.”
“The doctor said he could be released either today or tomorrow. Isn’t that right?” beamed his mother with tears in her eyes.
“Michael went missing, what was it on the eight of this month?” he asked trying to remember the details.
“The tenth…”
“And he was found what? Yesterday?”
“On Wednesday morning.”
“So he was gone for a total of three days…” he made a note of the dates. “Michael, can you tell me anything you remember about the night you went missing… The night of the tenth.”
He looked for assurances from his mothers.
“Go on,” she said and patted his hands under the bedclothes.
The young boy turned back. “I went to bed as usual…” he began. “And then, I heard this noise…”
“What sort of noise?”
“It was like a deep humming sound… coming from right outside my window.”
“OK, and then what happened?”
“Well, I got up out of bed to see what it was… and then, this bright light lit the entire room up. After that, I was some place else… Somewhere far away…”
“Where were you?”
“I don’t know. It was dark… And there was this man…”
“Can you describe him?”
“He looked like a man, but he wasn’t… I could see past it to his real face. It was all white and smooth, with big round eyes… like black eyes…”
“Did the man say anything to you?”
“Not really… He showed me a horse… that was missing part of its mouth.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looked like it was cut off, you could see inside of it… at the bone. It was disgusting, really…”
He looked up at the boy’s mother, sympathetically. “OK, then what happened?”
“Nothing… The next thing I remember it was daylight and I was back in the forest again.”
“He means the patch of trees behind the University,” his mother interjected. “That’s when he was found and brought here… We were told he had acute hypothermia.”
“What about strange markings, cuts or burns? Anything like that?” He was thinking about the abduction cases.
“No, a few scratches here and there maybe. Nothing serious…”
Before he left, he asked the boy to make a drawing of the man he had seen. The image surprised him. “You’re quite the artist,” he said putting away his notebook.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t have been anymore help…” said the grandmother.
She was right. The boy’s testimony had not been the smoking gun that he was looking for. If anything it merely muddied the already opaque waters by bring in aspects of alien abduction cases into the mix. He thanked them anyway and went back out to look for his car.
None of it seem to fit with the other testimonies he had collected. For one thing the boy described being transported out of his bedroom. That was new. And then there was his description of some kind of shapeshifting alien grey. But the most troubling of all was the lack of any paralysis.
On a hunch, he took out his phone and typed in ‘alien abductions’. He scrolled through the search results, but couldn’t find anything useful. So, he searched ‘aliens and dreams’ instead. This time he found a link to a series of online books; entitled; “Fringe Knowledge”. Towards the back of the book, he found a compelling story about a man driving along a remote stretch of highway alone, one night. He described how he stopped at a rest stop to get some sleep, when a bright light suddenly appeared and hovered silently in the air above him. As the object moved closer he had a sense that he was going to be abducted. The normal reaction for most people in this predicament would be fear, but he approached it on a more mature, intuitive level. Instead of being afraid, he decided to project a strong feeling of love toward the craft. In that instant the bright light vanished and he found himself alone in the parking lot once more; safe and sound.
Anastasia opened the door to the Meeting Hall and saw the other girls sitting on the floor. According to their diaries, today’s class was a Vril workshop with Evette Thompson. Vril energy was of no small interest to her, but it was the mysterious Evette that fascinated most of all. Who was this mysterious beauty who knew David so well? And more importantly, how well did she know him? Had she kissed him and what was he like?
They took their seats at the back of the class and Evette welcomed them all to the workshop. Behind her on the wall was a chart showing the human body and the seven energy centres of the chakra systems. One either side of these were two snaking lines, which she recognised as the right and the left meridians. She knew the basics of chakra energy. But what did Vril have to do with any of it, she wondered?
“Now that we’re all here,” she began. “I’m going to introduce you to Vril energy manipulation. Vril is a powerful energy force that emanates from deep within the Earth’s crust. It gives strength to the plants and by extension to all life on earth.
“Vril energy is intricately connected with the chakra energy system of the human body. There are seven main chakras in total,” she said pointing to the chart. “The root chakra, which is positioned at the base of the spine… the sacral chakra at the naval, then we have the solar plexus, the heart, throat, third eye and crown chakra. Then on either side of these were have the right and the left channels…
“When Vril is inside of the body, it is called sec. In order to make use of this sec energy, your chakras must be attuned to its frequency. So, are there any of you that haven’t been initiated, yet?” she asked.
There was a low murmur amongst the girls and then Wendy said. “Anastasia hasn’t…”
“Very, well then. Now, I want you all to close your eyes. The secrets of Vril energy are only known to initiates with a level six security clearance…”
They all did as they were told.
Then, Evette came and stood behind her. She felt the gently rush of air arising from the quick and deliberate motion of Evette’s hands above her head and heard the utterance of a series of largely unintelligible words. She witnessed a bright light and the arid, mellifluous chorus of the angels; a hundred thousand strong, serenading her with their song. As unusual as this experience was, there was something familiar about it. She had a very similar experience attending mass in her local church. How she could have forgotten about such a singular and unique experience was the real mystery to her. Then, just as quickly as the vision had appeared, it was gone again.
At Evette’s request, she opened her eyes; to see that everyone in the hall was looking at her.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel… Wonderful…”
The girls tittered.
“Did you notice anything?”
She bit her lip. “A sort of rush of energy rising up out of the earth. It was plant-like…” She had not meant to say that… But somehow it had felt right to lie.
“See, class?” said Evette turning. “No matter who undergoes initiation the effects are always the same…”
She was in shock. Those had not been her words…
“Now that you have all been initiated into the Vril energy sphere, you will need to know the signs and sigils which activate it,” she opened up a folder and took out a number of sheets. “Today I will teach you two of these symbols… Pass them around.”
The sheets of paper displayed two symbols, which were both very a like to one another and generally consisted of two spirals connected by a line, with an arrow in the bottom lefthand corner and two inverted triangles in the other.
By following carefully Evette’s instructions, she was able to draw the symbols in the air with her finger; starting in the centre of the topmost spiral, looping outward and reversing direction for the below spiral. Next, the girls were split into pairs, took turns alternately sending and receiving Vril back and forth to one another. First, it was her turn. She drew the Vril activation sigil above Wendy’s prostrated body, lay her hands on the crown of her head and waited.
To begin with, she didn’t feel anything too strange. Then, she gradually became aware of a tingling sensation in her fingers and her hands started to get noticeably warmer.
All of a sudden, she had a remarkable vision. In her mind’s eye, she saw two brightly coloured snakes; one red and one blue, intertwined in a figure eight with each one grabbing hold of the other’s tail in their mouth. The two snakes were rendered in the manner of an illustration, exhibiting dark outlines around regions of flat colour. The clarity of the vision was startling to her, at first, but she managed, through a strength of will not known to her before, to keep her eyes shut and her attention focused, until the image faded of its own accord.
Then it was her turn to lay back down and let Wendy administer the Vril energy. Here again, the effects were subtle and she began to question if anything substantial was actually taking place at all, or if it was sole product of the imagination. And yet there was this undeniable sensation of cold coming from Wendy’s hands. It was the complete opposite of what she might expect. Why? The hot and the cold sensations intrigued her. Were they not related to the red and the blue snakes she had seen earlier and to the right and left meridians of the chakras? It certainly seemed that way, as the right meridian was coloured red and the left one blue.
It was her turn again to practice the Vril energy healing on Wendy. As she sat there, with her eyes closed and her hands on Wendy’s head she saw the entire inner workings of the human chakra system laid out before her. The conventional depictions of chakras as discrete points or wheels, she learned was truly in error. Instead, a spectral band of colours from violet to red started at some point above her head and spread out in a linear fashion away from her, before fading into a bright blue sky. Beneath this, at a distance which was impossible to calculate, owing to the lack of any reference point, she saw the twin snaking lines of the right and left meridians; a Caduceus of bright white energy. She understood that both of these forms were orientated in a similar spatial manner to Wendy’s body. The angle between the linear rainbow and the Caduceus was hyperbolic in nature, however, which suggesting that they existed at unfathomably large scales.
Up until then, she had assumed that the chakra system was just a myth or perhaps a conceptual framework, but definitely not a real physical system. What she had seen next forced her to change her mind. She heard a soft titter and when she opened her eyes, she saw Evette standing at the head of the class with David whispering into her ear. His entrance seemed to signal the end of the class. “Ok, that’s it for today,” pronounced Evette. “If you’ll permit me to say a few words before you go, I’d like to wish you all a Happy Bealtaine and just to say that I’ll be doing a hip hop dance class in the morning and the Maypole dance at the ceremony with the rest of the instructors this year, so make sure and be there for that…”
While the other girls were exiting the building, Wendy stayed behind to talk to Evette and David. “Are you looking forward to being in the Maypole dance this year?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m thrilled. We all are.”
“I wish I was an instructor, then I could get to dance too.”
“Well, you could always do the hiphop dancing in the morning…”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s not really the same…”
“Haha… Wendy you are a true traditionalist…”
She laughed.
“Are Anastasia and Wendy part of dreaming workshop?” Evette said rolling up the chakra chart into a box.
“That’s right.”
“Are they any good?”
“Anastasia here only started her dreaming practice, what three days ago. And well… perhaps you should see for yourself…” He placed his hand on Evette’s shoulder.
“Stage three…”
“I think you mean Stage Two, don’t you?”
“Nope,” he smirked. “Congratulations… You saw yourself asleep last night…”
“That’s fantastic, Anastasia,” said Wendy. “I’m so happy for you.”
“You should be happy for yourself also,” he hinted.
“You mean?”
“That’s right you passed Gate Four.”
“Wow, I’m really impressed” said Evette. “Three gates in three days… That’s nearly better than your record isn’t David?”
“Nearly.”
“What will Ms. Lytton say to that?”
“Why? How long did it take you?”
“Two weeks,” he shrugged.
“Was Ms. Lytton your dreaming instructor?” asked Wendy. “I can only imagine what that must have been like.”
“Oh it wasn’t that bad…” she smiled; draping herself over David’s shoulder. “Kat was very fond of young David. Who could blame her? Am I right girls?”
Back outside they said their goodbyes.
“So what do you think of Evette?” Wendy asked when they were gone.
“She’s alright… But I didn’t like how she was carrying on with David.”
“Oh, someone’s got a bit of a crush…”
“I mean did you see the way she was all over him?”
“Yeah…”
“And that business about him and Ms. Lytton… You don’t think?”
“What?…”
“Never mind…”
The trail leading towards the mountain pass wasn’t as bad as some of the girl’s fretting had made her believe. And, all in all, it was a pleasant ride through the country side. She was able to just hang back and watch the pines and ferns drifting by. The sun’s rays streaked down illuminating the various nameless gnats into balls of luminous light, that went dancing around her head and the whole scene was permeated with the pleasantly antiseptic scent of the pine trees.
Before long the pass began to widen and they came to a picturesque little valley carpeted in drowsy meadow sweet and soft green grass. Dusted and hoary butterflies flitted this way and that amongst the wildflowers that nodded in the glade. They galloped across and reached the other side of the glade in seconds. This little taste of riding got their appetite up.
“I know,” shouted Amelia. “Why don’t we have a race?”
They all lined up at the widest part of the valley, a place where the glade rose up a steep incline and terminated at a barbed wire fence. “We’ll race up to the tree line,” said Amelia. “And back again.”
“Anastasia is going to win,” said Annette. “Her horse is the fastest.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. Okay, everyone line up.” And when everyone was in position, she said. “Ready? Go!”
They all shot off across the glade once more. Anastasia kicked her heels lightly against Chimera’s side and he carried her swiftly up to the tree line overtaking the lead horses as he went. She could hear Amelia cursing and striking her horse harshly with her whip, but it was no use; she was back down at the far end of the glade without a hope of being caught.
The girls dismounted under a grove of nearby apple trees and tied up their horses. Then, they all went into the forest towards the rush and gush of water. There amongst the trees a wide, fast-flowing stream bubbled up from a circular hole in the ground. While she stood watching the powerful flow of water, the girls made a great show of getting changed, which they said needed to happen quickly, before “that creep” Mr. Bulwark came around. He had left them go on up the trail alone. Being the most senior of the scout groups had to count for something, sometime.
Before long, all the girl’s were paddling by the deep pool, on the water’s edge. All except for Annette and herself.
“Aren’t you getting in?”
She shook her head. “No, too cold.”
“Why don’t you come with me instead?”
“Where are you going?”
They walked back out into the bright sunlight and Anastasia looked up at the surrounding mountains to where she had seen the Old Indian cave. “Up there,” she said pointing.
“You, you mean Otaktay’s cave? But we can’t go up there. It’s forbidden.”
She remembered her dream the night before; about how she had come so close to reaching the further shore and had failed. She would not let that happen again; she had a date with knowledge, as Don Juan would say.
“Well, you can stay here,” she called back “I’m going up there one way or another.”
Annette stood on the edge of the forest for a moment hesitating and then cried out. “Wait for me Anastasia, I’m coming too…”
The revelations concerning Harmon’s dream did not cease upon awakening, but continued to unfold, as he realised yet more connections to history, art and literature. In particular, he noticed how his dream closely mirrored those described in the great 13th Century work of poetry The Divine Comedy, by Danté. In the poem, Danté, accompanied by the poetic wizard Virgil, journeys into Limbo, which is described as a dark and rocky wasteland, just like the one he had experienced on the surface of the Sun. According to Virgil, this is the First Circle of Hell and reserved for souls whose only real sin was to being born before the widespread availability of Christian baptismal rites. Here he describes having met with famous historical figures like; Caesar, Socrates, Aristotle and Homer. Was it possible that both he and Danté had been witness to the same place and time and if so, did this provide some sort of proof for the existence of an afterlife; a place where souls went based upon their past transgressions or favourable moral worth; and there to await the Final Judgement?
From a scientific point of view, at least, Harmon couldn’t see why not. His experience, after all, had been an honest observation, and one which had been corroborated centuries earlier. If this were true and the Nine Circles of Hell were indeed a stark reality, then based on his own understanding, those infernal realms did not — as had been previously supposed — exist in the ground under our feet, but rather in the sky above our heads and on the surface of the Sun. This, in its own way, also made sense, for wasn’t Hell said to be a place where the souls of the damned burnt for all eternity? And what was the Sun if not for a giant ball of burning hydrogen? It’s own giant Inferno? But then, if this were so and the afterlife and God did exist, then that obviously meant that the Devil and eternal damnation must exist also.
It was a sobering thought, that in this age of drunkenness, few seldom permitted themselves to have.
The beginning of the climb was characterised by tall, straight pine trees that went up sixty feet above their heads. Surprisingly, however, these great structures did not provide the girls with much shade and the sun beat down upon their backs causing them to overheat and to sweat profusely. Consequently they were set upon by a swarm of midges that flittered around their heads and caused them gross irritation. But worst of all was the thick undergrowth, which on several occasions forced them to turn around and in search of an alternate route.
Annette sat down on the dusty path to take a break. “Can we go back now?” she asked.
She looked back at the thick brush and the scree field only thirty metres away, which signified the boundary of the forest. I’m so close, she thought, there’s no way I’m turning back now. “Listen, you wait here… I’m just going to take a quick look and then I’ll be straight back. OK?”
Annette did not reply, but simply started to unpack her lunch from her bag.
She did not waste any time. She hurried up the last stretch and quickly found her way through the bracken and onto the scree field beyond. It was so silent up here, it felt like a distant, alien planet. A blackbird lifted up from between the fallen boulders and perched itself on a nearby holly tree. It gave her a fright and in that moment reminded her of the fear meditations Ms. Lytton had encouraged her to do the day before. The idea of promoting fear as a way of life would have appeared to her an anathema under any other circumstances. But she so desperately wanted to succeed as a Nargual and have the other girls respect her that she was willing to do almost anything. And if Ms. Lytton had told her to do it there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with it, now could there?
She continued to harbour her feelings of unease as she stopped by the holly tree, but quickly forgot all about it as she noted the addition of red berries on the branches. How odd, she thought, as she had never seen a holly tree bearing fruit in midsummer and she suspected few people had. She picked some of the red orbs and spiny leaves and carefully deposited them in her pocket before she carried on. The mouth of the cave was not far away now, but the way up to it was treacherous and the going was slow. At this rate, she’d never get there.
Just then she noticed something unusual up ahead. Winding its way through the rocks was a deep groove. She dropped down onto the dry, dusty earth and followed its snaking course around white boulders smoothened with time, until she came face to face with the cave entrance itself. She hesitated a while on the threshold. There’s nothing to be afraid of Anastasia, she reminded herself. The cave stood empty, but it nevertheless showed obvious signs of former habitation. For one thing there was a dark circle on the floor, where a fire had been set many times. Maybe someone was still living here? On the walls she noticed strange petroglyphs carved into the rock. One of these reminded her of the diagram David had drawn of the different densities, only it had the addition of some strange lines and characters that she didn’t understand. Had Otaktay drawn these, she wondered? Yes, she thought, he is everywhere around this place…
She took out the sprig of holly leaves and left it on a rock near the entrance way. It was her gift to him; her way of telling him that she was grateful for all that he had done for her.
Time to get back, she thought; Annette would be looking for her. She passed out of the mouth of the cave quickly and down the winding path.
Being alone made it easier for her to manifest the frequencies of fear needed for her meditations, she noted. She put herself on edge by imagining that at any moment and around any corner Otaktay, or someone else, might jump out at her and grab her. Presently, she emerged back into the forest. She moved silently up behind Annette and did not say anything and simply waited for her to turn around.
“My God, don’t do that…”
“Do what?”
“You know exactly what… Sneak up on me like that…”
She smiled.
“You scared the life out of me…”
Just then they heard a galloping sound across glade. Looking down they were just in time to see Mr. Bulwark racing through the glade on the back of a horse; keeping one hand on his head to secure his ten gallon cowboy hat in place. It was an odd sight to see a man so overweight perched on the back of a horse and one wondered how it was even possibly. But there was no time to consider the physical practicalities of the scene; if they weren’t back soon, he would notice them missing and then there would be trouble.
Minyon said he was calling over and they would go to the club after that, so Harmon decided to stay at home for the rest of the day and work on some paintings. His mind kept going back to the dream he had just awoken from. If the Sun represented the Afterlife; the Underworld to be exact. And if the Underworld, at least according to Danté’s reasoning had 9 levels or strata, then didn’t this mean that the Sun had nine layers also? How many layers did the Sun have officially anyway? He typed it into his computer and discovered that the conventional wisdom on this subject numbered them at five: the core, solar envelope, photosphere, chromosphere and corona. But obviously this was only an estimate, as no-one had ever had gone to the effort of actually opening the Sun up and taking a look inside. Even with the latest solar imaging satellites the best that astronomers and cosmologists could do was look at the heat and radiation coming off the surface of the massive irradiated body. Everything beyond that was only guesswork and conjecture.
This, of course, levelled the playing field in allowing voices, who might otherwise be considered to be uneducated or unworthy, to have their say on the matter. In this case it was the 13th Century poet Danté who had discovered the internal structure of the Sun, albeit unintentionally, when he had had his vision of the Nine Circles of Hell. According to his schema, then, the internal levels of the Sun are nine and were in some way related to the realm of Limbo, and the very human failings of Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Betrayal, respectively. He seemed to recalled that the Ninth Circle of Hell, where Lucifer resided had been described as a circle without a centre. This powerful image brought to his mind the notion of that other behemoth of astronomy, the spacetime singularity or black hole. Was it possible that a black hole existed at the centre of our sun? Certainly, although this would mean that our Sun was a black hole too and that, indeed, all stars were.
Again there was no reason why this could not be so. No one had ever made a proven observation observed of a black hole, and in light of this there was no way to determine what this most curious of celestial objects might look like. For example, it has been suggested that the event horizon of a black hole would not appear black to the naked eye, but would actually be radiating an intense volume of energy; known as Hawking Radiation and, therefore, presumably, would have the same visual appearance of an ordinary star. The gravity well of a black hole would behave very differently, so obviously our sun was not that. But the idea that the Sun might contain a miniature black hole at its centre was certainly not impossible and might itself account for Danté’s Ninth Circle.
Harmon had already visited Limbo and did not intend to probe any deeper than that; not without good reason, at least. He only hoped that his visitation to the realm had been as a tourist and that it was not a taster or prelude to the kind of afterlife he could expect to endure from now to eternity. Either way it was best to stay on the safe side. He thought about saying prayers again and if necessary start going to Church. But, this was never going to happen; even with all the evidence he couldn’t make himself believe it was true.
As they drew nearer, it was clear that something was deeply amiss in the glade. From inside the darkened wood, they could hear the worried voices of the girls, which grew in fervour until they became shouts and screams of terror. Had Mr. Bulwark finally gone mad? Had he lost the run of himself and his despicable urges? There was literally no telling what might present itself to them in there.
Anastasia was first inside. She saw Mr. Bulwark bending down over one of the girls. She appeared lifeless and he was leaning down to kiss her. The other girls stood around in a panicked state.”What happened?”
“It’s Wilma. She fell into the current and nearly got swept away.”
“We were lucky that Mr. Bulwark came and pulled her out when he did. Otherwise…” Carol trailed off.
“Do you think she’ll be alright?”
“How the hell should I know?” returned Amelia.
“Everybody stand back,” shouted Mr. Bulwark. “And give me some room.”
The girls did as they were told and watched Mr. Bulwark placed his two fat lips to Wilma’s mouth and blew. Seconds later, she was coughing ad spluttering the clear spring water from her lungs. The other girls looked at one another in relief.
“How do you feel?” he asked the semi-conscious girl.
She was curious about that herself. She imagined that Wilma was feeling mixed emotions about the whole affair. For a start, she would naturally be appreciative of Mr. Bulwark and the pains that he had gone to in saving her life. On the other hand, she could scarcely imagine that Wilma would be much thrilled to awaken to her prince and to discover instead a ‘frog’. This struck her as being a clever observation in many ways, as there was something definitely toad-like about Mr. Bulwark. Wilma, beautiful as she was in a youthful sort of way and no doubt incredibly wealthy made for an appropriate modern day Princess. However, unlike the famous fairytale, their encounter had produced no positive transformation in Mr. Bulwark; he remained as hideous and fat as ever.
But perhaps this was being unfair. After all, if hadn’t been for him, there really was every possibility that Wilma would have been swept away by the current and drowned. Tales of his heroism, of how he had waded into the water to save her were quick to surface, but it was Wilma who was unsurprisingly showered with the most attention and kindness.
Once they got back to the camp, Wilma was taken off to the nurse and the rest of Form Seven were told to sit on the beach and wait for Ms. Lytton to arrive. They all sat in silence, as Mr. Bulwark paced slowly back and forth across the sand in front of them. Eventually, Ms. Lytton came informed them that Wilma was suffering from mild shock but was recovering nicely. “She’ll stay in the infirmary with Nurse Heavyside and then she should be released later today.”
All of the girls were happy to hear it. When they were done, Anastasia went to see if Wendy had spoken to Valerie on her behalf, as she had promised to do. “So, did you speak to her?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, she’s just a little sore over what happened. She’ll get over it. Anyway, it sounds like your day up at the spring wasn’t so hot…”
“You’re right it wasn’t…”
“Why don’t you come with me into the Meeting Hall, there’s something I wanted to show you…”
She followed Wendy round to the front of the hall and went in through the doors. Inside she saw garlands and leafy green bunting running up and down the length of it. “What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s very impressive. Is this what you did all afternoon?”
“We helped a little. Ben and Mr. Collins did most of it… But that’s not what I wanted to show you,” she said crouching down in front of the stage. “This is…”
In front of her was a small door leading directly under the stage. There were stacks and stacks of blue plastic chairs under there, which created a sort of a tunnel with just big enough for them to crawl through. “Follow me,” said Wendy.
It was dark and dusty inside the labyrinthine cave of old school chairs. Further on towards the back of the stage, the stacks of chairs gave way to boxes and old crates, some of which looked like they hadn’t been opened for decades. “Hey, where are you going?” she called to Wendy who was crawling on out of sight.
She pressed on in the direction of her friend and found her again, prying loose an air vent panel with her finger nails. They climbed out, dusted their hands and knees off and looked around. They were back outside again, close to the back of the Meeting Hall and not far from the beach where they had started.
Harmon went to the door and opened it to admit Minyon. He came in and plonked himself down on a folding chair and started to roll a cigarette. “What’s up?” he asked.
“No complaints. You hungry?”
“Nah…”
“How about a cup of tea?”
“Sure…”
The kettle was broke, so he had to make do with a saucepan. It seemed like a more authentic cup of tea in any case, sort of like the difference between mp3s and vinyl.
“You reading this?” Minyon asked pointing to a book on the table. It was Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
“A bit…”
He had it open now on his lap reading from it. “I’ve dabbled with Tibetan Buddhism myself…” he said flicking through the pages…”
So had everyone it seemed. “Yeah?”
“All about the bardos… You heard of them?”
He admitted he hadn’t.
“Its like a self-contained period of time. But it also has something to do with other universes.”
“Other universes? How does that work?”
“I don’t know, but there are like six universes in total, I think… Buddhist have different meditations they travel to the different bardos. They’re very clever those Buddhist monks.”
He laughed. “And you believe all that?”
“You don’t believe in extra-dimensions?
“What like string theory? Yeah… I believe in that…”
“Here listen to this… ‘a person may know when the time of death is near due to shadows of men on the sky and investigations…’ Weird, huh?”
“Here’s your tea,” he set the tea down on the table next to Minyon’s rolling tobacco. Next to the pouch was a plastic army man in a diving costume. “What’s this?” he asked.
Minyon snatched it from his hands. “Nothing…”
“Still playing with toys?”
“No, mind your own business,” he snapped.
“OK, take it easy…”
“And don’t tell me to take it easy…” he was red now veins pumping in his forehead. Minyon was clearly unhinged. He had always been that way, however, even back in their days at college together in Portland, he’s always been a hot head.
Evening arrived and it was time for the girls to attend the dream workshop again. This time, Anastasia and Wendy arrived early, ahead of the other girls. As soon as they entered, he smiled at her and said, “Congratulations… On passing the Second Gate of Dreaming.”
“But I thought the purpose of the Second Gate was to wake up in a dream?” Intimating she hadn’t done that.
“Well that’s what we say, but the true meaning of the gate is to exercise some degree of control over your dreaming environment… Evidently you did that correct?”
She thought back. “I did walk on water…”
“Well, then there you go then…”
“How exactly do you know when someone has passed a gate or not?” asked Wendy.
“I can see it in your aura,” he explained. “Every time you cross a gate, there is a corresponding change in your unipolar auric field. It begins as a red glow and then changes orange and so on. Yours is yellow at the moment…”
“But how do you see the auras? I mean,” she looked around. “I can’t see anything like that.”
“It is a skill all sorcerer’s must acquire at some point in their training.”
“And will you be teaching it to us?”
“I should think so, yes.”
“In ‘Tales of Power’… Don Juan kept mentioning something about the need for a warrior to acquire energy for dreaming. Is that the same type of energy you are taking about…”
“No, there’s two types of energy. One is called Vril energy that’s what we call it when it is freely available and the other is sec, when it is bound up inside of a person.”
“So where do we get this Vril?”
“There’s lots of energy sources…” By now the rest of the girls had taken their seats around the room and David put it to them. “Can anybody here answer Anastasia’s question?”
“What was the question?” asked Valerie.
“How does a sorcerer obtain energy for dreaming?”
“A sorcerer can only obtain energy by passing through the six stages of dreaming,” said Valerie.
“Not so, there are other ways that sorcerers can obtain energy. Lades for instance…”
“What are lades?”
He pointed to a framed atlas hanging on the wall. “They are places were energy lines converge on the surface of Earth. Can anyone name for me a prominent place of power?”
“The Bermuda Triangle?”
“That’s correct. The Bermuda Triangle is a liminal realm where the divide between this density and the next is thin. In fact it is so thin that ships and aircraft have been known to go missing there from time to time.”
“But that’s just a story isn’t it?”
“No, on the contrary, it is very real. Entire squadrons have been lost in that region and the rescue planes that went to look for them were all swallowed up also. Often it is said that lights in the sky accompany these odd disappearances.”
“UFOs?”
“That’s right, sorcerers can always find places of power by following these lights, as they are known to refuel their engines at lade nodes.”
“But why do sorcerer’s need to get energy in this way?” queried Anastasia.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, don’t we, as human beings have an unlimited amount of spiritual energy?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, don’t we all have immortal souls?”
“Do we?”
Anastasia looked around nervously. “That’s what I was told at least…”
“There’s no God Anastasia… I’ve looked around… so I think I’d know.”
The other girls laughed at this and made her feel stupid.
“The only way to gain everlasting forever is to obtain energy through dreaming and cross over into the Fifth Density before death. That is the entire point of the Dream Workshops and why Camp Calapuyau was set up in the first place…”
“So, if a person crosses all of the gates and unlocks their energy chakras, will they have enough energy to get to the Fifth Density?”
“For a while maybe, but the energy body does not have the proper reserves to keep you there indefinitely. That’s why we have to make do with other means… But we will get to them in time… Right now I want you all to concentrate on your dreaming practices, Anastasia here is catching up with you.”
There was a sharp in draw of breath amongst the class. “You mean?”
“That’s right. She’s crossed the second gate.”
“But how is that possible?” groaned Annette. “She’s only a half-blood.”
“Half-bloods are capable of mastering dreaming, but it usually requires of them a little more effort.” he paused to meditate, “Unless she is getting help from someone…”
“Is that possible?”
“Of course, all Narguals have their allies or spirit guides to help them.”
Being told that a spirit entity was making its way into her dreams at night without her permission made her feel distinctly uneasy. But, it was less about consent and more about her feelings of hurt pride. She wanted to achieve the different stages all by herself, rather than being the unwitting pawn being moved about the chess board by some unseen hand.
Harmon and Minyon made there way down to the Cascade Bar. It was filled with the usual crowd of geeks and misfits; eating pizza, drinking beer and playing board games from their childhood. His sister, spotted him from behind the bar and came over to talk with him. “Hey little bro,” she said. “Long time no see.”
“Hey…”
“Do you want a beer or some pizza?”
“A beer maybe, sure. I had lunch already…”
“Sure, ok then. Oh by the way, there was a pig in here looking for you today…”
“Oh yeah…”
“Yeah… He was asking about some graffiti?”
He nodded his head.
“Don’t be writing weird shit around town anymore. OK?”
“How’d you know I did it?”
She cocked her head and looked at him. “Because you wrote the same shit on a stall in the toilet, here one night.”
“Oh yeah.” He had forgotten about that.
A moment later his beer arrived and Harmon went off to look for Minyon who was nowhere to be seen. Not that that mattered much. The entire establishment was crawling with drunks who were willing to start a conversation with you at a moments notice.
He went outside into the smoking area outback and someone passed him a joint. “You’re Benjamin’s friend aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought I recognised you…”
“Harmon,” he said taking a blast of the joint.
“Paul…”
“That’s right.”
“So what do you do?”
“I paint.”
“Oh I see. Where do you get your inspiration from?”
“Lucid dreaming mostly…”
“Interesting. Say, I had a dream the other night…” For some reason, he knew what was coming, before he said it. “I was standing on the surface of the sun with all of these old philosophers types with me, like Plato and Aristotle…”
“I-I had exactly the same dream…”
Paul smiled at him.
“No seriously. It was just this morning. You were standing on the sun right? But it looked exactly like this.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it wasn’t all on fire and the rest.”
“Right.”
“And you met with the Plato and Aristotle. I was in the exact same place…” Here then was definitive proof in his mind of the objective truth, not only in the visionary power of dreams, but in the existence of the afterlife. But what did it mean? He felt as though this chance meeting with Paul was more than just coincidence. The universe was trying to tell him something.
But what? How was it possible for souls to exist on the surface of the sun without burning up? Did they exist on a higher energy frequency? If so then what did ordinary matter look like to them. He recalled how Earth and the other planets looked exactly as you would expect them to look in the night sky, like luminous stars or planetoids. In general the source of this illumination was the sun, but in the dream that both he and Paul had experienced this was clearly impossible, as the Sun had grown dim in both instances. Unless he thought, the light from the sun was somehow polarised in that dimension, so that it was invisible to the viewer on the way out, and its effect only showed up on the way back.
This concept interested him greatly. Imagine a light that you could shine in your face, without blinding yourself, but which still had the effect of illuminating everything around you.
But the more he thought about it though, the less it made any sense. It seemed contradictory that the effects of a light source could be seen without the source itself being detected in some way. However, he didn’t think that this apparent contradiction detracted in any way from the veracity of the theory as a whole. Not everything had to make sense of have a logical explanation, especially when dealing with substances and phenomena which existed and had their beginnings beyond the bounds of ordinary space.
The school bell rang and Anastasia left her classroom and crossed the little enclosed garden into the concourse. From out of the usual milieu of students, she saw Wendy walking towards her with a singular intent. She looked at her with a strange and powerful look in her green eyes. She was no longer the slightly naive girl that she had come to know and Anastasia now saw her for what she truly was: A powerful Nargual.
Wendy came up and put her righthand on Anastasia’s left shoulder and her lefthand on her waist. “Close your eyes and follow my lead,” she said.
She did as she was commanded and felt her friend leading her backwards through the room. A jolt of energy collided with her and Wendy changed coarse; pushing her in a slightly different direction, whereupon she felt another jolt of energy. Although she did not know the purpose or destination of their meandering path, it was clear by now that Wendy was guiding her through a series of energy nodes or gateways that only she could see. She noticed that the gateways entered her back around the left shoulder blade and while she was unable to directly perceive the energy nodes (or lades) with her eyes, she was beginning to get a sense of their approach. It felt like a large buzzing orb that grew in intensity the closer she got to it.
It overtook her and she exploded. In that instant, she was transported into a glittering realm with gigantic tubular promontories, coloured in the complete spectral range and erupting upwards in every direction. It was breathtaking like a display of slow motion fireworks going off everywhere around her. This was Empiricus; the Ninth Density; a realm of pure energy that underlay all things that David had spoken to her of. So everything they said was true; the Densities did exist. It was clear now that Wendy’s efforts at forcing her through the various energy gates had given her enough energy to experience this density directly. But even now she could feel her grip upon this most exalted of realities dwindling. She wanted to remain in this glittering realm forever, but she found the more she desired of it, the faster the vision faded away.
Having glimpsed the true nature of the universe, if even for a moment had transfixed her and now nothing less would do than to experience that vision once more in perpetuity. However, it was not to be and neither, clearly was it her decision to make. The great promontories began to slow and condense into the heavier and more familiar patterns of base reality. The resulting scene she recognised as her own dorm room. She looked around her and saw the room was filled with the still sleeping forms of her fellow girl scouts. Next to her, lying asleep in her bed was a face she could scarcely fail to recognise, but which nevertheless for some reason seemed strange to her. She sat on her the side of her bed and took in the slightly pudgy features of her sleeping face and marvelled at the wonder and eccentricity of it all.
Breakfast on this morning consisted of two slices of brown toast, an apple and a carton of juice. As usual, Anastasia sat with Wendy in the little picnic area outside the tuck shop. She was very excited to tell her friend all about the dream she had; fully expecting her to have had the same dream herself. “I dreamt about you last night…”
Wendy looked up with a confused expression. “That’s funny, I don’t even remember my dream.”
“But you must… You were at my school…”
“Where’s your school?”
“Back in Albany…” she got the sense that Wendy was playing with her now. “Never mind all that. You were there and you helped me to see through the energy gates…”
“Did I? I don’t know… I remember something about my mom and a cake, I think… Was that part of it?”
“No…” She was beginning to think that she was completely wrong about the whole affair. Maybe the person who had helped her in the dream the night before was not Wendy after all. Perhaps her Spirit Guide had taken on Wendy’s form inside the dreamworld. It was entirely possible that merely by setting out on her journey of discovery into the realm of dreaming she had prompted one or other spiritual beings from the void to take up the role of her mentor. It might have been Eamon Radcliffe or Don Juan or even Carlos Castaneda himself, she thought.
There was, of course, one other contender for her ally and perhaps the most obvious one; Otaktay. She had seen him standing at the window at the start of her dreaming practice, no doubt trying to make some kind of telepathic connection with her. It was also possible that the Buddhist monk she had seen was her mentor. She recalled how she had nearly drowned on that occasion, just as Wilma had done earlier that day. It seemed like too much of a coincidence.
“What class do we have now?”
“Art History and Appreciation…”
“We’ll probably just have to walk around the museum looking at the artefacts again.”
“I know… Can’t wait…”
“Do you really like that stuff?”
“Sure.”
“It gives me the creeps,” she said and shivered.
They arrived at the museum and Ben led the class around asking them to look at and pay close attention to the various themes expressed in the works. It didn’t take long for her to get a sense of what Wendy was talking about. There was something definitely unnerving about some of the old Indian artefacts, in particular the ceremonial masks of the Haida tribe, which appeared monstrous in aspect mixing human and animal facial features. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these masks was how the makers had seen fit to incorporated real life human hair into them.
At one point, she and Wendy were examining pestle used for grinding seeds that had two distinct carvings of animal heads on it. Ben explained that one of the heads was that of a killer whale, while the other was an eagle and that the fin of the whale doubled as the wing of the bird. On another occasion, they were standing next to a stone carving of what looked like a man embracing a child, but when looked at from the front the true nature of the act was revealed. She was stunned and repulsed, she had no idea that pedophilia was such a prominent part of Native American life in the old times. Ben explained how this was an aspect of dual the representation common in their culture. She felt that it was simply despicable and barbaric. She couldn’t wait to get out of there, away from the blood beating drum of sacrifice.
Clearly not everything about the past was as rose tinted as she had been led to believe, there were injustices and hardships in those times just as there were in ours. Consequently, this made her feel better about the type of civilisation she belonged to. For all its faults, and some would say they were many, American life and society did not, thankfully, promote institutionalised child sex abuse or the ritual murder of slaves to appease the Gods, as it appeared the Tlingit people did, once upon a time.
The road into the golf club snaked round before depositing Walter and his car in the parking lot, next to the dark wooden facade of the clubhouse. He could see Stolz and Kevin standing beside their cars getting their clubs ready. He had a plaid golf bag with a set of ageing clubs flung into the back seat.
“That’s quite a set you’ve got there…” said Stolz, when he saw them. “Were they your mother in laws?”
“Actually they were my Grandmother’s,” he said slamming the trunk down; he didn’t care, he like his grandmother.
“Hang on a second… that’s actually quite a nice driver,” Stolz said lifting it out of the bag and examining it. “I might have a go of that when we’re out on the course.”
“How do you get to it anyway?”
“It’s just through here. That’s the clubhouse down there if you want to take a look.”
“Maybe later…”
“How much does membership cost in a place like this anyhow?”
“Upwards of ten grand a year.”
“That’s steep…”
“Yeah, well I mean look at the place it is worth every penny, isn’t?” The golf course was positioned in a green belt on the far side of the river and had a view over the entire town of Albany; It certainly was picturesque, he thought. He was given the honour of teeing off first. He took a few practice shots and then smacked the ball high into the air.
“Nice shot…”
It landed near the green and rolled back several feet. Not bad was right…
Kevin went next, but managed to send it off left, while Stolz delivered his ball directly onto the green and stopped dead. “Not bad, heh?”
“No, not bad at all…” he admitted.
As they walked along, Stolz wasted no time in bringing up the real reason why they were out here in the first place. “So Kevin. Did you here about the little scrape that Walter got into earlier in the week?”
“No…” replied Kevin with a look of concern.
“It was nothing really…”
“Nothing? I wouldn’t say that… He had the Mayor of Albany and a State Senator breathing down my neck and looking for your badge…” he pointed at gloved finger in his direction.
“So what happened? I mean what did you do?”
“Nothing. I told him that Walt was a credit to the force, which he is — most of the time. When he’s not out investigating missing persons cases…”
“Which case was it?”
Stolz growled. “You should know, you probably assigned it to him…”
“What?”
“That’s what you do isn’t it? Feed him our boy intel for his little investigations into the fantasy realm of the paranormal.”
“I wouldn’t call three hundred missing children cases a year fantasy,” he protested.
“That’s within statistical probability for the state…”
“Way off and you know it…”
“OK, but without a perpetrator what are you left with? Nothing concrete, nothing tangible…”
“Alright, but we still had dirt on Sharpton. The guy was clearly bent and you let him off.”
“He’s a journalist. So he makes up a story or two. What’s to be done about it?”
“Look… The fact remains that we have an epidemic of missing persons cases on our hands. There were eighteen cases in the last week alone…”
“Seventeen,” said Kevin eyeing the ball, for another shot.
“What?”
“There were seventeen children confirmed missing last week.”
“There you see… Not as bad as you think…”
“Your figures are wrong…”
“No,” said Kevin. “One of the missing kids turned up, last night…”
“Which one?”
“Look, never mind which one…” complained Stolz.
But it was too late, Kevin had already said it. “The Barker boy…”
He tried to think of who he meant. The Barker boy? He couldn’t remember that specific case. “OK, so one of them returned home…”
“Well, not exactly home he’s in the Samaritan.”
“Look, no one is saying that there isn’t something fishy going on all right,” conceded Stolz. “But you can’t expect me to waste police man hours chasing ghosts and spooks and things that go bump in the night, can you?”
“No of course not, I just think that it should be kept as an open investigation and if people want to investigated they should…”
“Yeah, well that’s not how it works in our precinct, and going around hassling young reporters who are just trying to do their job isn’t par for the course neither.”
“Well, don’t worry, it won’t happen again…”
“You see that it doesn’t…”
Stolz had lured them both out here on the pretext of a game of golf just to further chastise them. He should have been more angry about it, but had learnt something very important, during this afternoon’s mismatch. This was the magic pill he’d been looking for. If he could get an interview with this Barker boy, he could find out what he’s seen and with it he could potentially crack this whole case wide open. And for that, he was more than happy to play through the back nine pretending like he cared, one way or another, about the outcome of the game…
* * *
A strange new object had appeared in the camp and consisted of a wooden frame covered over with chicken wire and which housed a single two stroke out-board motor propped up on a stick. The dimensions of the cage were about three feet in height, by three feet in length and one and a half feet wide. The base of the enclosure was padded with sawdust. “What the hell is this?”
“Maybe it’s a generator,” ventured Wendy.
“Doesn’t the camp have its own power supply?”
“Yeah, well there’s another one over there,” Wendy pointed behind her.
“They’re all over the place. How come we never noticed them before?”
“They’re new… They might be some kind of game for the juniors.”
She nodded her head. It certainly was plausible, she recalled her time at girl scouts engaged in similar activities, which when viewed from the perspective of the uninitiated, would appear completely irrational. Maybe it was something like that. Either way, she imagined that they would find out in time.
“Here you don’t think this has anything to do with the janitor do you?”
“Mr. Haight? Maybe, I guess.”
“Come on lets get out of here. I don’t want another telling off.”
“Where will we go?”
“Why don’t we go up and see the boys?”
“Is that allowed?”
“Well, it’s not exactly forbidden if that’s what you mean…”
They left the road, crossed over a stream and then started climbing upwards through a forest of tall conifers. It wasn’t long before they reached the seven or eight wooden cabins of the boy’s dorm rooms. They were much the same as their own dorms, only they required thick wooden stilts to keep them level on the hillside. This additional factor consequently made the place seem more dynamic and she thought that she would much rather be spending the night up here among the trees than plodding along on the positively pedestrian valley floor.
At the centre of the boy’s camp, they found Alex and Marvin, the two boys she had met on the first day. They were standing around and seemingly instructing the other younger boys in the use of makeshift bow and arrows. This surprised her, as she half envisaged the boy’s camp to be more reminiscent of a scene from William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies’. She realised that she was basing this assumption off of how Valerie and the other girls had treated her so far. She was therefore more than a bit ashamed of herself and her bias, when she saw that the boys were actually more genuinely inclusive and supportive of each other than the girls had ever professed themselves to be. This feeling of inclusivity was not simply limited to the boys however, because as soon as Alex was finished demonstrating the use of the bow and arrow by striking a paint can with deadly accuracy half way across the camp, he dropped what he was doing and went to meet with them.
“Anastasia, you remember Alex don’t you?” asked Wendy.
“Sure I do.”
“And Marvin.”
“Of course…” The four of them began walking up the hill and split into pairs, with Wendy and Alex up front and Marvin and her trailing behind. “This is some place you have here…” She said trying to break the awkward silence.
“We try to run a tight ship…”
“I can see that…”
“Have you ever been to any other camps, growing up? Girl scouts that sort of thing?”
“Sure, I did joined the Girl Guides for a while.”
“In Salem?”
“No, in Albany…”
“Oh…”
“Camp Calapuyau is the best honestly…” He sounded like he was selling something, now. “Are you looking forwards to crossing into the Fifth Density?”
“I don’t know…”
“It’s going to be awesome… You get to meet with your Spiritual Family, your real family.”
“I don’t know, I mean I already have a real family… My dad, at least…”
“Your Third Density family aren’t your real family…”
She stayed quiet; she wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. Just then, Wendy returned to bail her out, or at least that’s what she thought would happen .
“Anastasia doesn’t believe in the Fifth Density…” she said.
Alex and Marvin both regarded her with equal measures of shock.
“Actually that’s not true anymore… I saw something last night, something I can’t explain… Remember, I told you at breakfast this morning?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I did. About how you showed me the different energy gates…”
“Oh, I remember…”
“… Then I entered a glittering void-thing,” she continued.
“Wow, Empiricus… Your friend here has some excellent dreaming skills…”
“Don’t I know it,” said Wendy smiling.
“Hey, Anastasia, did you ever attend something called the GATE classes?”
“You mean the dream workshops?”
“No, this is something Marvin saw on the internet. He thinks that everyone who attends Camp Calapuyau were once belonging to these weird aptitude classes.”
“Well, sorry not me…”
“Weird…”
“It stands for Gifted and Talented Education…” said Alex. “You must have attended it, you’re the right age…”
“Hang on a sec,” that did ring a bell. “I remember some classes in kindergarten. We were made go and take these weird tests. Only it wasn’t called GATE, it was TAG.”
“Yeah, it’s different in some states.”
The violent resurgence of repressed memories made her go off and seek the solitude of a felled log. She remembered her teacher was this tall German lady named Mrs Krugg and how all of the classes were conducted seemingly in secret with the blinds drawn. Images of the terrified faces of classmates flashed before her eyes and on the black board she remembered a set of about eight or nine concentric rings; a map of the Densities of the Universe. My God, she thought, was it all true? Was she actually a child from another universe, with another family and identity apart from her own?
Just then Wendy came up to her. “A-are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just a bit…”
“I know it’s OK, you don’t have to explain… It can be all a bit much, when you realise what’s going on… But don’t worry, you’re going to have a wonderful time…”
“I don’t know… I mean…”
“Here, listen… Don’t think about it… I’ve got something important to tell you…”
“What?”
“Anastasia, you like Alex, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he’s over there, waiting behind that shed for you…”
She was surprised at how quickly her friend pulled strings for her.
“He’s over there now?”
“Yes,” she said picking her up and pushing her in that direction. “Go to him…”
She didn’t need much encouragement. She walked around the back of the shed and there he was. “Hi…” he said.
“Hi…”
“So, how do you want to do this?”
“I don’t know… In the usual way…”
“Have you ever done this before…”
She thought back to Kirk. “Sure, have you?”
“Sure…”
“Well, then…”
She stepped forwards into his embrace. The kiss was fine, but nothing to write home about. But what really did it in was how awkward Alex was being. She stopped when her jaw started to get tired and then led the red-faced boy back around the front of the shed, where they went their separate ways.
“So how was it?” asked Wendy.
“It… wasn’t great…”
“No sparks then?”
“She remembered back to the enormous firework display she had seen the night before with Wendy, when she had ventured up to the Ninth Density. When she compared it with that, she had to admit. “No, definitely no sparks…
“You’re sure I can’t coax you back into the clubhouse?” asked Stolz when the game had ended.
“No… I’ve got to be somewhere.”
“Looks like its just me and you Kevin…” he patted him on the back.
Walter went back to his car, threw his clubs in the boot and drove to the Samaritan where his patient; the Rosetta stone of this entire investigation, potentially lay waiting for him. He drove around the hospital grounds and eventually he found the admissions building. Minutes later, he approached the receptionist’s desk and asked her about the Barker boy.
“Are you a relative?”
He showed her his badge.
“Uh-uh… His mother and his grandmother are with him, at the moment,” she lifted the phone. “Room 212…”
He went up in the lift and found the room, way at the back of the hospital. His mother stood up to greet him the minute he knocked on the door. She wiped her hands on her dress, before shaking his hand. She had straight brown hair and a worn-out look upon her face. “My name is Walter Cullen. Do you mind if I have a few words with your son?”
“Of course,” she said, going back to his bedside. “Michael, this man is from the police department. He’d like to ask you a few questions. If that’s alright?”
He nodded weakly from beneath a mesh of intra-venous tubes.
“How are you feeling?”
“Much better thank you.”
“The doctor said he could be released either today or tomorrow. Isn’t that right?” beamed his mother with tears in her eyes.
“Michael went missing, what was it on the eight of this month?” he asked trying to remember the details.
“The tenth…”
“And he was found what? Yesterday?”
“On Wednesday morning.”
“So he was gone for a total of three days…” he made a note of the dates. “Michael, can you tell me anything you remember about the night you went missing… The night of the tenth.”
He looked for assurances from his mothers.
“Go on,” she said and patted his hands under the bedclothes.
The young boy turned back. “I went to bed as usual…” he began. “And then, I heard this noise…”
“What sort of noise?”
“It was like a deep humming sound… coming from right outside my window.”
“OK, and then what happened?”
“Well, I got up out of bed to see what it was… and then, this bright light lit the entire room up. After that, I was some place else… Somewhere far away…”
“Where were you?”
“I don’t know. It was dark… And there was this man…”
“Can you describe him?”
“He looked like a man, but he wasn’t… I could see past it to his real face. It was all white and smooth, with big round eyes… like black eyes…”
“Did the man say anything to you?”
“Not really… He showed me a horse… that was missing part of its mouth.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looked like it was cut off, you could see inside of it… at the bone. It was disgusting, really…”
He looked up at the boy’s mother, sympathetically. “OK, then what happened?”
“Nothing… The next thing I remember it was daylight and I was back in the forest again.”
“He means the patch of trees behind the University,” his mother interjected. “That’s when he was found and brought here… We were told he had acute hypothermia.”
“What about strange markings, cuts or burns? Anything like that?” He was thinking about the abduction cases.
“No, a few scratches here and there maybe. Nothing serious…”
Before he left, he asked the boy to make a drawing of the man he had seen. The image surprised him. “You’re quite the artist,” he said putting away his notebook.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t have been anymore help…” said the grandmother.
She was right. The boy’s testimony had not been the smoking gun that he was looking for. If anything it merely muddied the already opaque waters by bring in aspects of alien abduction cases into the mix. He thanked them anyway and went back out to look for his car.
None of it seem to fit with the other testimonies he had collected. For one thing the boy described being transported out of his bedroom. That was new. And then there was his description of some kind of shapeshifting alien grey. But the most troubling of all was the lack of any paralysis.
On a hunch, he took out his phone and typed in ‘alien abductions’. He scrolled through the search results, but couldn’t find anything useful. So, he searched ‘aliens and dreams’ instead. This time he found a link to a series of online books; entitled; “Fringe Knowledge”. Towards the back of the book, he found a compelling story about a man driving along a remote stretch of highway alone, one night. He described how he stopped at a rest stop to get some sleep, when a bright light suddenly appeared and hovered silently in the air above him. As the object moved closer he had a sense that he was going to be abducted. The normal reaction for most people in this predicament would be fear, but he approached it on a more mature, intuitive level. Instead of being afraid, he decided to project a strong feeling of love toward the craft. In that instant the bright light vanished and he found himself alone in the parking lot once more; safe and sound.
Anastasia opened the door to the Meeting Hall and saw the other girls sitting on the floor. According to their diaries, today’s class was a Vril workshop with Evette Thompson. Vril energy was of no small interest to her, but it was the mysterious Evette that fascinated most of all. Who was this mysterious beauty who knew David so well? And more importantly, how well did she know him? Had she kissed him and what was he like?
They took their seats at the back of the class and Evette welcomed them all to the workshop. Behind her on the wall was a chart showing the human body and the seven energy centres of the chakra systems. One either side of these were two snaking lines, which she recognised as the right and the left meridians. She knew the basics of chakra energy. But what did Vril have to do with any of it, she wondered?
“Now that we’re all here,” she began. “I’m going to introduce you to Vril energy manipulation. Vril is a powerful energy force that emanates from deep within the Earth’s crust. It gives strength to the plants and by extension to all life on earth.
“Vril energy is intricately connected with the chakra energy system of the human body. There are seven main chakras in total,” she said pointing to the chart. “The root chakra, which is positioned at the base of the spine… the sacral chakra at the naval, then we have the solar plexus, the heart, throat, third eye and crown chakra. Then on either side of these were have the right and the left channels…
“When Vril is inside of the body, it is called sec. In order to make use of this sec energy, your chakras must be attuned to its frequency. So, are there any of you that haven’t been initiated, yet?” she asked.
There was a low murmur amongst the girls and then Wendy said. “Anastasia hasn’t…”
“Very, well then. Now, I want you all to close your eyes. The secrets of Vril energy are only known to initiates with a level six security clearance…”
They all did as they were told.
Then, Evette came and stood behind her. She felt the gently rush of air arising from the quick and deliberate motion of Evette’s hands above her head and heard the utterance of a series of largely unintelligible words. She witnessed a bright light and the arid, mellifluous chorus of the angels; a hundred thousand strong, serenading her with their song. As unusual as this experience was, there was something familiar about it. She had a very similar experience attending mass in her local church. How she could have forgotten about such a singular and unique experience was the real mystery to her. Then, just as quickly as the vision had appeared, it was gone again.
At Evette’s request, she opened her eyes; to see that everyone in the hall was looking at her.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel… Wonderful…”
The girls tittered.
“Did you notice anything?”
She bit her lip. “A sort of rush of energy rising up out of the earth. It was plant-like…” She had not meant to say that… But somehow it had felt right to lie.
“See, class?” said Evette turning. “No matter who undergoes initiation the effects are always the same…”
She was in shock. Those had not been her words…
“Now that you have all been initiated into the Vril energy sphere, you will need to know the signs and sigils which activate it,” she opened up a folder and took out a number of sheets. “Today I will teach you two of these symbols… Pass them around.”
The sheets of paper displayed two symbols, which were both very a like to one another and generally consisted of two spirals connected by a line, with an arrow in the bottom lefthand corner and two inverted triangles in the other.
By following carefully Evette’s instructions, she was able to draw the symbols in the air with her finger; starting in the centre of the topmost spiral, looping outward and reversing direction for the below spiral. Next, the girls were split into pairs, took turns alternately sending and receiving Vril back and forth to one another. First, it was her turn. She drew the Vril activation sigil above Wendy’s prostrated body, lay her hands on the crown of her head and waited.
To begin with, she didn’t feel anything too strange. Then, she gradually became aware of a tingling sensation in her fingers and her hands started to get noticeably warmer.
All of a sudden, she had a remarkable vision. In her mind’s eye, she saw two brightly coloured snakes; one red and one blue, intertwined in a figure eight with each one grabbing hold of the other’s tail in their mouth. The two snakes were rendered in the manner of an illustration, exhibiting dark outlines around regions of flat colour. The clarity of the vision was startling to her, at first, but she managed, through a strength of will not known to her before, to keep her eyes shut and her attention focused, until the image faded of its own accord.
Then it was her turn to lay back down and let Wendy administer the Vril energy. Here again, the effects were subtle and she began to question if anything substantial was actually taking place at all, or if it was sole product of the imagination. And yet there was this undeniable sensation of cold coming from Wendy’s hands. It was the complete opposite of what she might expect. Why? The hot and the cold sensations intrigued her. Were they not related to the red and the blue snakes she had seen earlier and to the right and left meridians of the chakras? It certainly seemed that way, as the right meridian was coloured red and the left one blue.
It was her turn again to practice the Vril energy healing on Wendy. As she sat there, with her eyes closed and her hands on Wendy’s head she saw the entire inner workings of the human chakra system laid out before her. The conventional depictions of chakras as discrete points or wheels, she learned was truly in error. Instead, a spectral band of colours from violet to red started at some point above her head and spread out in a linear fashion away from her, before fading into a bright blue sky. Beneath this, at a distance which was impossible to calculate, owing to the lack of any reference point, she saw the twin snaking lines of the right and left meridians; a Caduceus of bright white energy. She understood that both of these forms were orientated in a similar spatial manner to Wendy’s body. The angle between the linear rainbow and the Caduceus was hyperbolic in nature, however, which suggesting that they existed at unfathomably large scales.
Up until then, she had assumed that the chakra system was just a myth or perhaps a conceptual framework, but definitely not a real physical system. What she had seen next forced her to change her mind. She heard a soft titter and when she opened her eyes, she saw Evette standing at the head of the class with David whispering into her ear. His entrance seemed to signal the end of the class. “Ok, that’s it for today,” pronounced Evette. “If you’ll permit me to say a few words before you go, I’d like to wish you all a Happy Bealtaine and just to say that I’ll be doing a hip hop dance class in the morning and the Maypole dance at the ceremony with the rest of the instructors this year, so make sure and be there for that…”
While the other girls were exiting the building, Wendy stayed behind to talk to Evette and David. “Are you looking forward to being in the Maypole dance this year?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m thrilled. We all are.”
“I wish I was an instructor, then I could get to dance too.”
“Well, you could always do the hiphop dancing in the morning…”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s not really the same…”
“Haha… Wendy you are a true traditionalist…”
She laughed.
“Are Anastasia and Wendy part of dreaming workshop?” Evette said rolling up the chakra chart into a box.
“That’s right.”
“Are they any good?”
“Anastasia here only started her dreaming practice, what three days ago. And well… perhaps you should see for yourself…” He placed his hand on Evette’s shoulder.
“Stage three…”
“I think you mean Stage Two, don’t you?”
“Nope,” he smirked. “Congratulations… You saw yourself asleep last night…”
“That’s fantastic, Anastasia,” said Wendy. “I’m so happy for you.”
“You should be happy for yourself also,” he hinted.
“You mean?”
“That’s right you passed Gate Four.”
“Wow, I’m really impressed” said Evette. “Three gates in three days… That’s nearly better than your record isn’t David?”
“Nearly.”
“What will Ms. Lytton say to that?”
“Why? How long did it take you?”
“Two weeks,” he shrugged.
“Was Ms. Lytton your dreaming instructor?” asked Wendy. “I can only imagine what that must have been like.”
“Oh it wasn’t that bad…” she smiled; draping herself over David’s shoulder. “Kat was very fond of young David. Who could blame her? Am I right girls?”
Back outside they said their goodbyes.
“So what do you think of Evette?” Wendy asked when they were gone.
“She’s alright… But I didn’t like how she was carrying on with David.”
“Oh, someone’s got a bit of a crush…”
“I mean did you see the way she was all over him?”
“Yeah…”
“And that business about him and Ms. Lytton… You don’t think?”
“What?…”
“Never mind…”