Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (10 page)

"Well thanks, Bruce, but I haven't had time
to examine your credentials yet."

"A pox on credentials. They don't mean a
thing. I wasted four precious years going to college to learn
precisely nothing about anything worthwhile. A single night with
my guides means more than all the universities combined could give
me."

"Yeah, I wanted to ask you
about them. What do these guys do other than hang around waiting
for you to consult them?"

"You really do not respect my guides, do
you."

"I didn't say that, Bruce."

"You don't have to say it,
Ashton. By the way, I understand that you and Selma had a
delightful time."

"What?"

"Selma? By the seashore? Come now. You
haven't forgotten already."

"Bruce?"

"Yes, Ashton."

"Could I have a go at those guides of
yours?"

"I will see what can be done."

"Soon, Bruce."

"There is a certain element of danger
involved."

"I'll chance that."

"You will be opening yourself to influences
that could, ah, alter your view of reality." "I'll chance that
too."

"Very well. I will try. You already have a
friend in court, so...

"Yeah. You mentioned him."

"He's an angel."

"An angel? You mean...?"

"A perfect angel, Ashton."

Chapter Twelve: A Family Affair

We moved to a conference room and sat at
opposite sides of a round mahogany table that was set for six. The
chairs were heavy, comfortable, nicely spaced. A gooseneck
microphone, a small pad, and a ballpoint pen were placed at each
position.

The floor was carpeted
wall to wall and the walls themselves were bare and shiny,
unmarred except for a small air-conditioning vent at the rear. A
rectangular skylight, about two by three feet, was emplaced in the
ceiling directly above the table, providing good natural
illumination. There were no windows. The microphones had no cords;
each sprouted a tiny antenna. There was no PA system that I could
detect, so I guessed radio mikes to an outside taping
system.

I had hardly sat down
before a man and two women came in and quietly positioned
themselves at the table, the women together on my left side, the
man between Janulski and me. They exchanged cordial greetings with
Janulski, smilingly acknowledged introductions to me. All three
were forty-ish.

Hilda was very pretty in a roundish
Scandinavian way, blond hair thickly braided about her head, very
little makeup.

Rachel was slender
everywhere but in the chest, had evidently burned all her bras,
wore her dark hair short and neatly styled; also very
attractive.

Ted looked like a guy
who'd spent his life at a desk—or maybe in a classroom—very smooth
hands, an intelligent snap to the eyes, a quick laugh, entirely
masculine.

There was nothing creepy or weird about any
of these; altogether they were a comely and likable trio.

Janulski gave them no setup whatever. He
merely pushed his pad and pen aside and said, "Let's get
started."

Mind you, I have been to a
séance or two and I guess I'm somewhat familiar with every
mediumistic trick in the bag. This approach was decidedly different
from anything I'd ever seen.

The room was well lighted. There were no
props, no music, nothing at all to distract or to aid deception. It
was a bare room except for table and chairs, not even a vase of
flowers or a picture.

There was no mumbo jumbo,
no wailings, no sighing or murmuring. The three mediums merely
rested their hands atop the table with palms up, closed their eyes,
bowed their heads, and announced almost in unison that they were
ready.

Janulski then did
likewise, maintained a silence of about ten seconds, then very
softly announced, "We bring to your attention Ashton Ford, whom we
discussed earlier. We ask that you recognize him and counsel
him."

My attention was of course
focused on Janulski. But within seconds, perhaps no more than five,
Rachel stirred slightly and her throat began to flutter ever so
gently in a very fast rhythmic pulsing.

At the same instant I
became aware of a different quality to the atmosphere within that
room—the physical atmosphere, that is, the air itself, almost a
different charge—electrical charge, like on a hot summer day just
before the thundershower—I could even smell it, like ozone—and I
could
see
a fine
thickening or whatever in the atmosphere immediately surrounding
Rachel.

Ted got into the act then
with identical behavior except that the thing with the throat was
more pronounced, his Adam's apple sliding up and down rapidly like
a guy guzzling a Coke.

Hilda was only a beat
behind, and the atmosphere in that room had become strongly enough
charged to lift the hairs on my arms.

Janulski opened his eyes and whispered,
"Thank you for coming."

Rachel's mouth opened like a mechanical
doll's and issued a single harshly whispered word: "Peril."

Janulski caught my eye and
pointed to his notepad. So I casually picked up my ballpoint, not
really overly impressed at that moment, but then hastened to catch
up as the words began flying back and forth across that
table.

Let me set it up for you
properly so that I can dispense with all this description and just
give you what was said. Hilda spoke second and then Ted, both
exactly in the way I gave it to you for Rachel—just a single
whispered word at a time—but in very quick succession and not
necessarily in proper rotation.

Rachel: "Peril..."

Hilda: "... precedes..."

Ted: "... peace."

Hilda: "Sorrow..."

Ted:"... accompanies..."

Rachel:"...joy."

I thought at first they were giving me
epigrams. Whatever, they were giving them damned fast. I had to
use stroke codes to identify each speaker and still I was having a
hell of a time keeping up. By about the third round, I even had to
abandon the speaker code and just go for the words themselves.

I got these in the space of about a minute,
maybe less than that:

"Strangers become lovers."

"Lovers become strangers."

"The virgin lusts while the satyr
rests."

"Authority corrupts compassion."

"Dispersion feeds reversion."

"Community bests disunity."

"Flesh decays when the spirit weeps."

"Life delays what the devil reaps."

"One on one."

"All in all."

"One on one is all in all."

"Error comes home."

"Truth propagates truth."

"Profit seems lost when loss is profit."

"All is lost when all seems gained."

"Beauty contemplates beauty."

"Fear the fearless."

"Tremble before
temptation."

"Avoid the idolatrous."

"Abandon the ambitious."

It stopped at that point.
I was still scribbling the final two admonitions when Janulski
inhaled sibilantly and declared in a loud whisper, "What luck! It's
a tutorial. I didn't expect that."

He was obviously thrilled and delighted,
barely able to contain himself, which was a sharp contrast to his
earlier demeanor. He positively glowed with excitement.

I was aware also of subtle
movement about me, although everyone was in place—a change in the
vibrational constant, or maybe moving pockets of air with
differing density—I don't know. I just sensed
movement
or
motion
—a rustling without actually
hearing anything, an atmospheric perturbation without actually
seeing anything.

The mediums were perfectly
still and relaxed; they could have been sleeping.

I reached for a cigarette then decided
against it, put the pen in my mouth, looked at Janulski. He was
gazing at Ted, and his exultation had faded to something
approaching fear.

I looked at Ted too, and
maybe someone watching me at that moment would have said that I
shared Janulski's emotional mood. Because something very weird was
happening with the medium. The tiny muscles of his face were
alternately contracting and relaxing in an entirely uncoordinated
way, as though the flesh had become soft clay or baker's dough and
some unseen hand was molding it haphazardly—a push here, a pull
there, momentary dimpling giving way to grotesque masks and leering
caricatures, eyes alternately rolling and shifting.

This went on for some twenty or thirty
seconds while the earlier noted atmospheric imbalance seemed to
collect itself about him, as though fusing with his own physical
aura. Then it all just sort of gradually resolved—settled in, so to
speak—and Ted was no longer Ted. The nose was longer, more pointed,
the chin more prominent and bearing a deep cleft; the eyes even
seemed socketed differently and the brows heavier; cheeks were
wider, smoother. Altogether a different personality was controlling
that flesh. Matter of fact, Ted had come to look a bit like me.
Sparkling eyes crackled at me and looked me up and down. Then that
mask smiled, the eyes softened, the lips parted in a merry chuckle
and It spoke to me: "Well, well."

I flipped a glance at
Janulski and then back to the living mask. "Who do we have here?" I
asked, hoping that I was smiling back. I admit to being a bit
flustered, here.

It said, "She did a good
job with you, I see." Another chuckle. "Knew she would, of course.
That's why..." The mask became disarranged momentarily, then
settled in again.

I asked, "Should I know you? What is your
name?"

"...bad I couldn't have hung around longer.
We don't always call our own shots, though, do we? Well, you're a
fine-looking young man. Heard some wonderful things about you."

I shivered and asked It, "Can you hear
me?"

Rachel replied, in the raspy whispering
voice. "I hear. I will relay."

I looked from her to It, then asked It, "Can
you give me your name?"

There was a brief pause
while It just sat there and gazed at me with a sort of bemused
smile. I was reminded of the look on one's face who is waiting for
an interpreter to tell him what someone has just said.
This
one apparently had
the wrong slant because It chuckled again, the eyes flashed at me,
and It said, "No no, she got it all wrong. I never owned a Ford in
my life. Believe it was a Studebaker. Or maybe a Buick. I'm not
sure."

Another laugh, another flash of those
intense eyes, then: 'Time's up, they say. Have to go. She's very
proud of you. Stay the way you are. Oh, wait—here's another—someone
just gave me...Selma came home today. That's it. Selma came home
today."

It departed, caving in and withdrawing into
a small dimple just above the eyes.

The flesh of Ted's face rebounded and
wobbled a bit, like disturbed Jell-O, then resolved immediately
into his normal features. He closed his eyes and again bowed his
head while I gaped stupidly with frozen mind and tumbling
emotions.

I heard Janulski say, in that soft, sweet
voice, "Thank you. Thank you all for coming."

Then the mediums began stirring.

Janulski cried, "How
thrilling, Ashton! You were just awhile ago telling me about your
parentage. But I must have misunderstood the earlier message! I
thought he was your father in a
previous
life!"

I got to my feet and reached him in one
quick step, grabbed him by the collar, and put his face to the
desk. "You son of a bitch!" I panted.

"What is the
matter
with you?" he
howled.

I let him go but had to
hold my own hands to keep them where they belonged. "Some things
you just don't play with, pal," I told him. "If I find out you did
then we'll discover which one can break the other in
two."

The mediums were aghast.

But so was I.

And I had to get back to Annie's private
office. I wanted to see if that sucker was wired for sound,
too.

Chapter
Thirteen: To Know, Yet Know Not

Okay, sure, my reaction was both extreme and
premature. But I guess the experience really touched one of my
sensitive spots and it also rubbed the wrong way against another
of my prejudicial concepts.

I never really liked the idea of spirit
communication, you see. One of the reasons for that, I'm sure, is
that it offends my sense of that which constitutes an orderly
universe. I never really gave a lot of weight to the evidence
supporting purported recalls of past-life experiences either,
probably because I had never really bought the reincarnation
idea.

If I'd had to take one or
the other, though, I'd probably have taken reincarnation because
the theory itself does harmonize so beautifully with natural
science and what we know—or think we know—about life on Earth and
man kind in general. Reincarnation—metempsychosis, as it is also
known—provides the balancing complement to the theory of evolution.
Or, as some thinkers would prefer to think of it, evolution
validates reincarnation and vice versa.

So, see, I've never really had a coherent
belief-system in place inside my head or else I would not have this
inconsistency of thought. I say on the one hand that I cannot
accept a disorderly universe while on the other hand rejecting
ideas that promote orderliness of the phenomenal world. I don't
like the idea that we can talk with the dead, yet I have long
believed that the personality survives death in some manner or
other. Reincarnation theory provides, among other things, a
rational explanation of what happens after death. Most
reincarnationists believe, moreover, that there is a waiting
period between incarnations while the soul or whatever is
preparing for the next life—so this tends to support the whole
spiritualistic concept of spirit guides and direct communications
between the living and the dead.