Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (16 page)

I told her, "I'm his proxy." I hauled out
the power of attorney, gave it to her.

She quickly scanned it and gave it back,
said in a vague voice, "I didn't know angels needed proxies."

"Me neither, but maybe sometimes they do.
Look, I don't know who Valentinius is. But I do believe that you
could be in more danger already than any cop could throw at you.
And I do sincerely believe that is why I am here."

I gave her a brief sketch of my
"professional" background, then related my encounter with
Valentinius at Malibu. She let me talk, offering no comments and
requesting no elaboration beyond what I gave her. When I had given
her all that I intended to give, she asked me, "So what kind of
danger do you think I'm in?"

So I let her have it,
directly and bluntly: "Cohabitation danger, possibly. Or, beyond
that, total takeover. You are presently providing bodily expression
for two distinct personalities. Both have artistic talent—one just
beginning to realize herself, the other no less than a master. I
have seen the work of both. The master had her show last night. It
was a wow. Better than what I see here today, but that difference
is very subtle; the master is present also in the student, and that
presence is unmistakable. But you may be moving toward total
assimilation. That worries me, and I think we need to work on
it."

The lady was plainly frightened. "What does
that mean: total assimilation?"

I explained, "Permanent loss of the
student."

"You mean... "

"Uh huh. She's taking you over, kid."

It was not a total buy. Francesca was scared,
yes— wouldn't you be?—but after all I am not certified for medical
diagnoses and the lady hardly knew me. I can be persuasive though
when I need to be—so at least I had her attention to the extent
that she was not willing to simply shrug the whole thing off and
walk away. She admitted to the lapses of memory and told me that
indeed they seemed to be occurring more and more frequently.

She also talked of her background—born and
raised in California, Austrian ancestry, studied at CalArts but
left without graduating—couldn't bend herself to the will of her
instructors—worked briefly at a day-care center, then as a cocktail
waitress while studying days under a private art teacher,
gravitated to Laguna along the art trail.

She had talked a local restaurateur into
hanging several of her paintings on his walls, and one day a man
came to see her about commissioning a portrait. The man was
Valentinius. One thing led to another—weird things—and she found
herself "transported bag and baggage" to Pointe House. She had not
seen her benefactor since.

Instead of being fired up
over this apparent leap of fortune, Francesca had at first found
it difficult to concentrate on her work at Pointe House. She'd
taken to long sojourns on the beach, idle daydreaming, killing
time. Then she became interested in yoga, shortly thereafter
discovering a video tape on postures and breathing exercises, and
Hai Tsu began instructing her in various Taoist
disciplines.

The daydreaming evolved into meditation
techniques and yogic purifications. There were periods of confusion
with out of body experiences and dreamlike trance states. And she
began to disremember, a purification technique that came to her in
a dream, through which she encouraged replacement of real memories
by "dream-stuff."

But Francesca had not thought of herself as
being in trouble. She realized that she had become different but
she greeted the change as growth and self-realization. The memory
lapses were only vaguely troubling; she dismissed them as
preoccupation, which was easy to do once she again became fired up
over her work and was spending long hours in the studio.

Four weeks before my
arrival at Pointe House, Valentinius contacted her by telephone
and told her that he'd arranged an "important" exhibition of her
work, that she had six weeks to prepare for it. She did not at that
time have a single work that she considered worthy of exhibition,
so she threw herself into the challenge with renewed vigor—often
working eighteen to twenty hours a day in her studio—usually so
lost in the work that day blended unnoticeably into night and,
frequently, consciousness into unconsciousness in baffling patterns
that found her waking up while walking across the room or strolling
along the beach.

It was a classic pattern, in my freaky
world.

And the more Francesca talked, the more
convinced I became that she was definitely in trouble.

I guess she could read my reactions because
also the more she talked the more troubled she became.

We ended up by taking the elevator to the
beach where she could "let the salt air cool my brain" while we
walked and talked. She showed me a wind cave in the rocks,
accessible only at low tide, through which we intended to gain
access to the open far side of the point, but we did not get that
far.

That wind cave provided access to more than
the other side of the promontory. A narrow crevice in there was
bringing wind from a third direction; it caught my attention and I
paused for a closer inspection; discovered a bend just inside the
crevice and an opening large enough to admit a person of my size
and agility—faint light just beyond and a sound like wind chimes
inviting me to enter.

I looked at Francesca and Francesca looked
at me. I asked her, "Shall we?"—and she replied, "Why not?"—so we
accepted the invitation.

And found not my dream-state mission control
center—but instead perhaps, paradise itself.

It was paradise to me, pal.

I believe it was paradise for Francesca too
if I can take her at her word.

We made love again, this time slow and sweet
and sa- vorous—and this was definitely Francesca I, the girl next
door. We did it on the rocks, surrounded by sparkling tidal pools
filled with life and purpose, in a high-domed chamber lit by three
converging shafts of light from some

where high above—and she deliriously told me
several times, "Surely I would have remembered this."

For myself, I could never forget it.

But more was involved here than she and
me.

Dream state or whatever, I had been inside
that chamber before... and I believed that she had too. We had been
there together, in precisely the same way and with the same
overpowering feeling for each other.

But I knew that we would never, ever, be
there together again. Don't ask how I knew; I just knew. And I knew
too that Francesca Amalie—by whatever name—was the mate that God
had made for me.

Paradise, yeah; I'd found it...only to lose
it perhaps forever—this time around for sure. But I did not know
that yet.

Chapter Twenty-One: Contemporaries

I guess we both lost
awareness of time until natural forces reimpressed it upon our
romantic idyll. The cold Pacific was advancing upon us and the
light from above was somewhat more muted when Francesca stirred in
my arms then sat bolt upright with a concerned cry. The tide had
risen and was beginning to fill the chamber with closely
successive surges; already the narrow opening was under water even
during the recessive ebb of the waves.

"We'll have to swim out!" Francesca
gasped.

"Fat chance," I told her. I could hear the
surf pounding onto the rock directly outside, and I had seen it
earlier from above at high tide. The fury of the attack upon those
rocks was an awesome sight; anyone caught in that maelstrom would
be reduced to hamburger faster than he could think about it.

I knew that our only chance lay in elevated
retreat. We grabbed our clothing and began searching for such a
possibility; found one in the form of a narrow ledge projecting
from the darkened back wall at about the level of my shoulders. It
was uptilted just a bit and looked as though it would provide
secure footing if nothing else, so I hoisted Francesca up, threw
the clothing onto the ledge, then managed to pull myself up
sufficiently to hook the smooth lip with a foot and slide aboard
sideways. Picture that as a nude action please—bare skin and all
appendages against sheer rock—but it really was not all that bad. I
discovered why as soon as I got there. The surface was smooth and
slippery. Francesca was not there, and the clothing was not there.
Neither was I, for long.

I told you that the ledge
appeared to be projecting from the wall at an upward tilt.
Actually, it was projecting through the wall with about four feet
of headroom, almost like a chute providing access to another
chamber beyond that wall. As I said, it was slippery. It was also
deeply inclined, and I knew a moment of consternation when I
realized that I was sliding into a black void. I tried to twist
about for a finger hold on the outer lip but I was already beyond
that point. I could hear Francesca's frightened pantings directly
ahead, but I had already collided with her before I could gather my
wits toward any attempt at communications.

She grabbed me and clung for dear life—too
scared to even speak I guess—and, yeah, it was scary; she was
entitled. We were in utter darkness; God knew where; but there was
a bright side, and I tried to make that point: "Least it's dry," I
told Francesca.

But it was also very quiet.

I could not hear the surf, or anything
else.

For the first time in my life in fact I
understood what it meant to be as quiet as the grave. Our breathing
and our heartbeats were all the ear could hear.

Francesca must have been entertaining
similar thoughts. She whispered to me, "Are we...what are...are we
dead?"

I chuckled as I replied, "If so, we came
down on the bad side. Always heard the path to hell was greased and
slippery."

"Very funny," she said, but she was not
laughing with me.

I found our clothing and tried the cigarette
lighter. It was dry and functional, its flame bright and straight
in the still environment, and it revealed to us the immediate
dimensions of our "grave." We were in a narrow cavern, about a
yard wide at the floor, with sloping walls that converged to form
the uneven ceiling at varying levels— hardly more than a crawl
space at the tighter points but it appeared to twist along in a
more or less horizontal fashion and to extend beyond the reach of
our light.

There was not enough light to reach to the
top of the chute that had deposited us there, and I could not
hazard a guess as to its length, but I knew without more than
tentatively trying that it was going to be a hell of a difficult
climb out of there. So I suggested that we venture on and see what
lay at the other end of our crawl space.

I was thinking of my dream you see—the
mission control dream—and wondering if it had been precognitive in
some way, as many dreams are, especially many of my

dreams. And since it would be many hours yet
before the tide began to ebb, even an exit via the chute was not a
practical option at the moment.

I offered to venture on alone but Francesca
would not hear of it. We struggled into our clothing and I made a
leash of my belt, forming a loop with the buckle at my ankle.
Francesca twisted the other end around her hand and we set off
single file on hands and knees. It was slow going along the uneven
rocky surface and a bit rough on the knees, but I got no complaints
from Francesca and we moved steadily forward through many twists
and turns for probably ten minutes—pausing now and then to hit the
lighter and check our surroundings—before I saw the faint glow at
the end of the tunnel.

"Light ahead," I announced with a happy
grunt.

Francesca panted, "Thank you, God."

"Don't thank him yet," I cautioned. "Could
be no more than a tiny vent like those above the tidal
chamber."

She said, "Has to be more than that. I could
not possibly go back."

We lay there and rested for a couple of
minutes and talked to cheer each other. I said, "Sorry, kid; really
didn't have all this in mind when we left the house."

She said, "Who even had a mind when we left
the house? But you're not really sorry for what happened, are you?
I'm not."

I replied, "Sorry for that, no; for this,
yes. Feel like a jerk. Should've known better. Did know better.
Just lost the time."

She said, "Hey, it's my beach. I damn well
knew better. And I feel like the chicken who went back for his
feather."

"What chicken was that?" I asked.

"You know, the joke about the chicken who
lost a tail feather while crossing the road. Went back to get it
and a car ran over his head. Lost his head over a little piece of
tail. That's me."

I said, "Well gee, thanks. Just a little
piece of tail, eh? That's all it was?"

She giggled tiredly, replied, "Okay, so it
was a big piece. We still lost our heads, didn't we?"

I said, "Well it's not
hardly worth it if you don't, is it. Speaking strictly for myself,
Ma'am, it was worth it."

She said, "Thanks. Isn't that what I
said?"

"You said a lot of things," I reminded her.
"But I'll chalk it up to the heat of the moment, if you'd
like."

"What
did I say?"

"Said you love me. Always
have, always will. Said we've walked the star trails
together."

She laughed lightly, a bit
self-consciously. "Must have been the other me."

I said, "Okay."

She said quickly, "No, it was me. Really me.
I remember every lovely moment of it. And I remember some things
that you said too."

I said, "Okay."

"You said God had me in mind when he created
woman."