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  “But he was strange. Always staring at me, talking to himself. I heard him complaining a couple of times, to someone else, about me. From his apartment. He didn’t like the smell of my cooking or I played my music too loud. It was strange…he never said anything to my face, but he’d say things loud enough for me to hear. I didn’t give it much mind at first, but after awhile it began to wear on me. It was his energy…”

  “It was dark?” I said.

  “Yes,” Tony said. “Very. I didn’t catch it at first. Then I noticed how he looked when he watched me. If he knew you were looking at him, he’d smile, look like an All American boy. But if you caught him, he was different…his eyes were dark, he had this hate-filled look, that sideways sneaky thing you see in kids that have gone their whole lives lying and never been caught.”

  “Father of Lies,” I said.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

  “Felt it though, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed and went on. “I noticed some other people his age hanging around, and then this older man started coming by. His father, by the look of him. I heard the kid complaining to his father about me.”

  “You never did anything? Never spoke to him?”

  “Nothing. I left him alone, I was polite when I passed him in the hall…nothing that a normal person would find offensive.”

  “Normal being the key word.”

  He laughed. “That’s right.” His face darkened suddenly. “One day I was sitting in my front room. I spent a lot of time sitting and meditating and working on my healing visualizations. In my recliner. I heard someone screaming outside and when I looked it was this kid…”

  “What’s his name?” I said.

  “Bryant. Bryant Eichmann.”

  “Eichmann? Like the Nazi?”

  “In more ways than one.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was like he was having a schizophrenic episode…he was ranting and raving about me outside my window…like he wanted me to come outside. Then some young woman came by and made him go up into his apartment. About an hour later someone knocked on my door. It was his father.”

  Tony paused to sip his coffee. His mouth twisted as though it had suddenly gone sour.

  “He was just like the son?” I said.

  “Worse,” Tony said. “Everything about him…eyes, even how he smelt…something was just wrong about him. What made it so uncomfortable, though that word doesn’t do it justice, was how arrogant he was, like everything he wanted was already decided in advance.”

  “Decided about what?”

  “He wanted me to move out. He said I was disturbing his son, his son was special, his son was sensitive. He was important, he knew people, he was a banker…Nothing about me being an invalid, nothing about me minding my own business…it was all about him and what he wanted…”

  I nodded. I got that. The self-centeredness, the whole Service-to-Self orientation before anything or anyone else, is the single most significant indicator of deep-seated possession and allegiance to the Dark Forces.

  Evil.

  The second most significant is the adherence to the Lie. Satan got his handle as The Father of Lies for a reason. A brilliant Catholic writer named M. Scott Peck wrote a book called People Of The Lie which was his take on that indicator of evil, how to define it and how to identify it in others early on.

  “What else did he say?” I said.

  “I told him the truth. I wasn’t bothering anyone. He was the one with the problem.”

  “I take it he didn’t like that answer.”

  Tony laughed. “No. He didn’t.”

  “And then…other things started to happen?” I prompted.

  Tony stared at me. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by bruised flesh. Deep in there I saw a flash of something staring back at me, something quickly hidden, and I felt my guides gather round me…

  …Possession, cording, curse, thought form…tended. Definitely tended…

  That meant that somewhere a demon or a sorcerer—or both—were watching through Tony’s eyes, tending the possession through an energetic cord.

  I drew a deep breath and silently called on the angelic realm, The Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth, and Michael and Uriel, the two mighty archangels who honored me with their assistance. I felt the energy shift, a brightening, and saw through my half-closed eyes the darkness above and behind Tony ease as the angelic realm arrived, and awaited the Work that was yet to be done…

  “Yes,” Tony said. “I saw his father hanging around with someone else. They were searching outside the apartment building. Like they were looking for something or someone.”

  “This was while you were at home?”

  “Yes. I was always at home. Then I started hearing them outside my door. They’d stand out there and talk about things that could happen, how people could fall down stairs and get hurt. Then someone went through my laundry and some of my clothing disappeared.”

  “Do you remember what disappeared?”

  “Some underwear, boxer shorts, and an old T-shirt.”

  “Did you ever find them?”

  “No.”

  This was shaping up to be something more than run-of-the-mill possession. Clothing, especially natural fibers worn next to the skin, build up an energetic charge. After so much immersion in a human energy field, they become infused with the energy. So if you have a piece of clothing that someone has worn for a long time, you have a piece of that person’s energy. A sorcerer can work with that energy, treat the clothing as though it’s part of you, since for energetic purposes it is part of you until it’s cleared by time or sunlight or direct focused intention.

  Tony wasn’t just the victim of an active possession; he was the victim of a curse, a focused one deliberately made with skill and knowledge and technique; a curse tended now by the maker of it, and somewhere, that maker was becoming agitated. I saw with the shamanic vision that is part of my Gift a ripple in the energy field of the suffering man seated across from me, a ripple reflected in the muscles of his face, a ripple like the subsurface passage of a great white shark might make on a moonlit ocean, late in the night…

  “How long ago was this, Tony?” I said.

  “About a year.”

  “What happened to prompt you coming over here?”

  Tony looked at Maryka. She nodded in support.

  “It stepped up,” he said. “It got worse. They were coming by all the time, especially at night. They’d stand outside my window, outside my door, talk about killing me…”

  “Are you sure it was them? Were you hearing it or did you see them too?”

  “It was them. I took their pictures. I recorded them with a digital video camera.”

  “Who was it?”

  “The kid upstairs, Bryant and someone named Christian. I think it’s his brother.” He paused. “You know what’s strange? I think they were twins…”

  I cringed inside. The Cabal…the place were weird science and the paranormal intersected with conspiracy theory and the bloody back corridors of Realpolitik.

  Clones. Like the ones I’d run through the chipper.

  “So they were twins?” I said.

  “I think so,” Tony said. “They weren’t alone…there were police men sometimes.”

  “Local?”

  “Yes. I think the father…”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “Wilhelm,” Tony said. “His friends called him Will.”

  “That’s a good German mouthful,” I said.

  Tony didn’t think that was funny. “I had dreams about that, too. I dreamt I saw them in a concentration camp, dressed up in Nazi uniforms, laughing, standing on a platform looking down on people, sorting out the weak from the strong, the men from the women, the women from the children…”

  He blinked back sudden tears.

  “Horrible dreams,” he went on. “I saw them tossing children into the flames. Laughing while they d
id it.”

  I paused. “And the police?”

  “The father, he had something to do with them.”

  “I thought you said he was a banker?”

  “Yes. But he also had something to do with the police.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  He went on. “I just had this feeling something bad was going to happen if I didn’t move. They kept coming around. They didn’t care who saw them. The other neighbors were afraid to say anything. It got to the point I couldn’t sleep at all. I went for days without sleeping. So finally I left. I came over here and stayed with Maryka. I had the first good sleep I’ve had in I can’t remember how long. She told me about you and what you’d done for her, and I just knew I had to talk to you.”

  My coffee had grown cold and my stomach sour. Not a good combination. Nor were the signs before me. Creator had sent this to me, as Creator does. A true practitioner doesn’t advertise or solicit, he trusts that the Creator will send him those who need the special kind of help we provide and that what we do will be in accordance with the Divine Plan.

  What I felt right now reminded me of an interview with Mother Theresa, the Catholic nun-saint who worked with the poor and with lepers. The interviewer—well meaning but insipid—had asked Mother Teresa how she was able to summon the strength to deal with what she saw everyday. But before the elderly nun could answer, the interviewer answered herself and said, “I suppose God never send you anything you can’t bear, right?”

  Mother Theresa’s acerbic reply was this: “Yes, I suppose that is true. That’s why I pray every single day that God not have so much faith in me.”

  I identify with that. Especially right now.

  I hid my apprehension. I do that well. “What can I do to help you, Tony?”

  “Can you work on me?” he said. “I could really use your help.”

  I closed my eyes. “Yes. I can help you.”

  When I opened my eyes, Tony’s relief was visible in every line of his face.

  “What do I have to do?” he said.

  I looked at the window at the sky, then at my watch. “What’s your schedule like today?”

  “Wide open all day,” he said.

  “Maryka? You?” I said.

  “I’m free…” she said, puzzled.

  “The reason I’m asking is that if Tony wants you to be available, could you be? To stand in support of him and tend to him after we get done?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I can do that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I need some time to pull things together. Maryka, bring Tony to my place around seven-thirty tonight.”

  “We’ll be there,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “I need to talk to some friends of mine. I’ll see you then…around dusk.”

  I sat there, lingering, while the two of them left. I swirled the dregs of my coffee in the cup and watched my clients leave.

  …you know you can talk to us any time…came the soft and familiar and loving voices that were with me always.

  “I know that,” I said out loud. There was no one sitting near me to be disturbed by the sight of a disheveled shaman talking to himself. “But I want to give you the attention you deserve.”

  Soft laughter. oh no, I think he wants something…you think?…oh, absolutely.

  I walked out the door and First In Front appeared beside me. I was struck, as always, how other people on the sidewalk seemed to sense his presence and move out of his way; sometimes they’d stand aside with a puzzled expression as though they could almost see my invisible but ever present companion.

  I’m thinking ceremony, First In Front said. You thinking ceremony?

  A big crow circled overhead, cawed once, flew away into the west. I stopped to stare up at it.

  Yes, Burt said. Absolutely. Time to gather power and allies. This is much darker than it appears.

  A deep sibilant purr, like a powerful engine idling, heard through layer upon layer of velvet. Oh, Marius, the soft feminine voice said. Always your best work when it’s another calling upon you for help…

  That’s his risk, Burt said. He’ll start thinking he’s special or something…

  …more laughter, loving laughter…

  Oh, he thinks that, Tigre said. But I’ll give him this—he does the best he can.

  “Gee thanks,” I said. “Glad you see that.”

  “Excuse me?

  I started. The woman next to me held her daughter by the hand and waited for the light to change.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I talk to myself all the time.”

  She laughed. “Just don’t start answering yourself!”

  The light changed and we all stepped off the curb.

  Slam—I felt an invisible body push into me, a flash of white moving fast, and I reached out and grabbed the woman and her daughter and yanked them back hard—

  —a pick up truck tore through the intersection, so close that it’s side mirrors whipped past my face, never touched the brakes as it sped off, leaving only a glimpse of a tense face glaring straight ahead, hatred simmering off it—

  “God!” the woman shouted. “That asshole blew right through the light. He almost hit all three of us!”

  “You okay?” I asked. My heart pounded in my ears.

  “Yes…thank you.” She looked at her daughter and then at me. “Thank God you were here.”

  I looked up at the sky. A crow circled far above me. “Thank God He was here.”

  …yes, shaman, Burt said…soft laughter. It’s a full time job watching out for Marius Winter.

  Job security, Tigre said. She curled up on the hood of my 4Runner, sunning herself. First In Front sat cross legged beside her, his coup stick and his war knife resting in his lap. He held the knife in his right hand, straight up, and like a reversed spotlight a beam of light descended from the sky, illuminated his blade, and flowed through him into my car, down into the earth…

  I stepped into the Circle of Light around my car and felt warmth and the sudden release of pressure I’d been unaware of, the lifting of that dark attention that comes from a Shielded Presence, a Dark Force watching me, tracking me…

  Yes, First In Front said. Ceremony and Allies. Who you gonna call…

  Wasn’t gonna be Ghostbusters.

  Chapter 13

  Ceremony is a big part of the shaman’s work. Spirit—the Great Spirit and its manifestations as individual souls and spirits, all of those pieces that collectively make up the Presence of Creator God—provides guidance to the shaman when it’s time for a ceremony; we get specific instruction as to what to do and when for whom. Our job is to translate that information and instruction into action. We have to journey to the spirits along the path of the Divine and return with that information, and use it to create the Sacred Space that contains the Work.

  The Sacred Space that brings and holds and heals with the Divine Light of Creator God.

  Rituals have a general sequence that rarely varies, though the specifics are always dependent on Spirit’s guidance. The shaman, his assistants (if any) and all the participants need to be cleansed and cleared, as does the space in which the Work will be done. The shaman sets out the boundaries of the sacred space, the Circle, and calls in the Powers from the Four Directions to seal the space and fill it with light and energy. Then the Work is done, and thanks offered up, and the Circle opened to release the Spirits and the energy back to the Creator.

  Easy, right?

  It can be, but not always.

  Part of the shaman’s training is to pay close attention to the specific instruction offered by the spirits…and that requires discernment. Discernment, sorting the wheat from the chaff, the static from the clear signal, in processing information from the Other Realms is often the biggest stumbling block for a shaman.

  Creator knows it’s been a stumbling block for me.

  More than once, Marius, Tigre purred. Right on your face.

  Yes. Well. As I’ve said, no point in arguing with th
e Divine Feminine in any of Her Manifestations, especially the big-clawed and big-teethed kind.

  So that’s the ritual.

  Then there’s the participants.

  Me, of course, since Creator had sent me this particular job. Maryka and Tony. But I wanted more help. Knowing when to ask for help, and who to ask for the specific help needed, is another big educational milestone in the on-going training of a shamanic practitioner.

  Every practitioner has his or her version of the Little Black Book of contacts; mine was just like the Mission Impossible, a list of the very best to be called upon as needed. It’s a small list but heavy duty. That sparked commentary from my peers, who agreed that “heavy duty” was what came my way. Some of them chided me for loving the drama of the big fight; I had to sit with that for awhile. When I journeyed on it, I was shown this: all of us Called in the Light have Work to do, and no job is greater or lesser or any more dramatic than the other—it’s all of value. Me, I figured the Creator needed a hardhead who would tackle the big dirty dark jobs and that was why He made me the way I am.

  Or so I tell myself.

  My healing room was ready. The table set with clean linen, fresh water and flowers on my altar, a new bundle of sage and sweet grass and a lighter placed into my abalone shell; everything clean and fresh.

  I was ready. Rested and clear after a period of meditation and light journey, a shower and a meal of salad and an excellent piece of raw sirloin cut into thin strips like sushi. Raw. The quality meat helped ground me, though it revolved some of my peers.

  Pure…but not too pure.

  Works for me.

  A knock at the door.

  …who you gonna call, Ghostbusters! Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!!

  “Thanks, Burt,” I said.

  I’d called them on short notice, but they all came without question. I felt a swelling and a gladness in my heart as I looked at them gathered on my step: Jolene, the love of my life, carrying with her all the gravitas and power and wisdom of a Full Priestess of the Circle; Dillon, relaxed and bulky under his leather car-coat bulging with weapons; and, just getting off her Harley in front, Sabrina, shaking loose her violet hair as she took off her helmet.