The Haunting of the Gemini (15 page)

FIFTEEN

Going beyond the grave is as natural to me as drinking a glass of water. I can't get away from it, even when I try. And I have tried. But it is always the living who pull me back to death. People from all over the world, with all different educational levels and beliefs, all come to me for answers. The letters and the phone calls are relentless. There are always those who need me, either to help them communicate with a deceased loved one or to figure out their own past lives. And the spirits are just as persistent. Always tugging at my mind. There is only so much that a sponge can absorb before it needs to be wrung out and set aside to dry. I never get that chance. I don't know what it's like
not
to be soaked with other lives.

I also take away the demons. And I do mean that literally. My home has been used to expel countless entities. I take them in and pack them away so they can't escape. But the residue always remains. No matter how tightly you lock the box, the foul demon has seen your face and knows your home. I used to move often. My places would become so crowded that the knocks and bangs never stopped.

People send me cursed objects from all over the world for safekeeping. I store them securely, but they don't go away completely. Sometimes, when I am with a client, one of those demon boxes begins to bang. The poor person is always so startled, and I play it off—just a little activity stirring, nothing to worry about. What I really want to say is that I'm used to those damn demons trying to distract me. But they can't. They're not
my
demons. I can keep them in line. I am perfectly able to turn back to my clients and focus on their questions.

But now, I was the one who needed someone like me. I was the one who couldn't figure it out. Who does this child belong to? Why do I keep seeing her? What does she want from me? What is her message? I had stopped myself countless times from using my own skills to find the answers. I don't know why. Maybe it was the fear of knowing the truth. Maybe it was the fear of seeing things I would have no control over.

If I did do this, there would be no one to filter my discoveries. When I work with other people, I can tell them about their past lives in a gentle manner. I do not share the pictures of torture and death. I would not want anyone to relive such hideous acts. I take extreme care to never cross that line. But I could not offer that kindness to myself. I knew I would see the violence and death. Even though I had not gone there—yet—I was damn sure it was not a peaceful ending.

I had fought with myself for months, as this child's visits became more frequent. Now I sat in my office and finally decided that I would do it. I drew a chalk circle about five feet wide in the center of the room and then prepared two candles. The white one, I bathed with a homemade blend of oils called “in one with the spirit talks.” The black candle I soaked with “the gate opener,” an old recipe that has been in my family for generations. I needed to open the past in order to heal the future. It would not be nice to witness, but then death never was.

I washed my feet with holy water, which would take off the residue of any unwanted malevolent creatures of the night. Be gone, unclean spirits! I placed small mirrors in the circle—one in front of me and one behind—as well as my father's rain stick and my childhood music box, where a tiny ballerina spun slowly to Beethoven's
Moonlight Sonata
.

Summonings can be dangerous to perform. They tend to attract a few hitchhikers, little entities that slip quickly through, trying to find a home for haunting in a dark corner or in a weak person. These beings are built for destruction and will definitely make your life hell. I can shoo them away, but I still have to keep my guard up.

I hung my mojo bag around my neck. Then I picked up my chalk again and drew the symbols that represent the gods of aid in Native American beliefs. I moved in the ritual dance of the dead, which shows allegiance and honor. The spirit shall carry on.

When I had finished drawing the symbols, I read from an old book of psalms, my voice rising louder and louder as the summoning began. The chandelier above me started to sway and the bulbs to flicker. Light bounced off the walls, and the air became thick and still. The smell of freshly turned earth rose from the floor. The dead walked alongside me now.

“Come forward, child.” I spoke as I sat and began rocking back and forth. “Come forward and speak to me.”

The candle flames shot up and then blew out. The music box stopped. The floor began to creak and then, in the far corner of the room by the door to the laundry room, was the image of this little girl. I dropped the Book of Psalms and leaned forward.

“Who are you?” I asked gently. “Why are you always with me? Why do I know you?”

I stared into the dark corner. She had her face to the wall. Small cries, like a dove in distress, came from her. And then, a soft voice.

“I was never supposed to interfere with the person I am now. My body is in heaven. My spirit is you.”

I sat back, shocked. It was true. I had tried for so long to convince myself otherwise. I had been in denial.
I
couldn't have ever been a victim. I was the person other people came to for justice! I helped others deal with
their
deaths. How the hell was I supposed to help myself? How could I get past the feeling of my own killer's hands around my throat?

“You are to avenge the broken wings of innocence,” she said to me. “I know who I went into at birth, and you saw me, too. For all the people young and old, it is you who shall attract the monster, rid them.”

This little girl in a yellow raincoat named Jane was me in a previous life. And her choosing to be reincarnated as me was no mistake. She knew that if anyone could get justice and exact vengeance, it was the daughter of a medium and a medicine man. I could not speak. Pictures of this child's murder played in my mind. I jumped up in horror, instinctively trying to get away, and my foot accidentally went through the chalk line and broke the circle. I searched frantically for the chalk—I knew that with the circle open, I was exposed to the dark elements and in great danger. I saw it rolling across the floor, spinning quickly out of my reach as though pulled by an invisible force.

The laundry room door banged open, and Patricia's voice yelled for the child to run. The girl took off like dust in a windstorm. The door slammed shut, and she was gone. That corner of the room plunged into black. And then, barely, he moved. The tall man in black crouched down to mimic the height of the child. He hid his face with his arm, and spoke to me in a child's voice.

“Let's play a game . . . I'll count. One . . . two . . .”

His long combat knife slid across the floor and into my broken circle. The handle hit my leg.

“Three . . . pick it up.”

I sat still.

“Four . . .”

My hand shook uncontrollably as I tried to stop myself from reaching toward it.

“Nine . . .”

“Stop!” I yelled. “You can't go from four to nine! Stop!”

He was still using her little-girl voice.

“Pick it up and slit your throat.”

I closed my eyes and told myself that this was not real. The next thing I knew, he had crawled over to me—into my broken circle, damn it—and grabbed my hands.

“It is real. It's all real.” His grip hurt. “Look at me, Jackie. Don't you believe in God? Isn't that what you preach? What would God be without me?”

His fingers were like iron on mine.

“Now, we don't need you knowing too much. Pick up that knife before I do.”

I took the knife, and his eyes gleamed with victory.

“I knew you would, Jackie. Put it to your throat. Let me eat your sins away. It won't hurt.”

I stared into his eyes. His words were hypnotic. I began to forget my own existence, as though a huge eraser were wiping away my memory. I felt lost. I was close to death, close to taking my life at his command. And then something came over me. It was a rage and a love all at once. I remembered who I was. I was loved. I was needed. And I fought this kind of evil. I would fight it now with its own weapon.

I turned the knife into this rotten thing that slinks from prison and finds its next victim, then slithers back in glory, slapping God in the face. I leaped toward him and shoved the knife deep into his gut.

He just looked at me, and then we both looked at his stomach, where there was no wound and no blood. He fell, laughing and holding his middle. “Ohhhh, she killed me . . .” He rolled on the floor, still laughing.

I had to do something. I grabbed one of the mirrors and held it up to him, to show the devil his own face. He knocked it out of my hands.

“Jackie, you're a killer, just like me. You plunged that knife in so hard, so good. You made me proud. How did it feel, Jackie? Better than sex?” He laughed in my face. “You can't kill what's already dead.”

He walked through my broken circle, kicking over my religious relics, and sat in my office chair. He leaned back and nonchalantly rolled a smoke. I knew what he was doing—reliving Eddie's actions years later. The killing man.

“Hey, Jackie. You're supposed to ask me if I got a smoke.” He held up the cigarette as though he were enticing me over. I did not move from where I'd pressed myself up against the wall on the other side of the room.

“Come over to me, Jackie. Let's take a walk in the park.”

I still didn't move.

“Take this!” He jumped toward me. “It's what you wanted, remember, Patricia?”

I took it. He lit it. I smoked it.

“You're a sinner, Jackie.”

The sound of my inhale was drowned out by the garage door opening. Will was home. He would come through the laundry room door any second.

“I am always with you,” he hissed.

Will opened the door and there was only me, standing against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He looked at the scattered relics and smudged chalk.

“You doing a ritual or something? Who were you talking to? I heard a man's voice.”

He wanted my husband to think I was crazy. He would be back.

The house phone rang upstairs, and we both ran up the steps. It was the prison. My finger automatically accepted the call by pushing number 3.

“Hi, Jackie, this is Eddie. Did you see it?” He was excited, I could tell.

“Yes, I saw. Eddie, what made you kill?”

His excitement came through the phone line.

“It's a long story that's unfolding for your eyes only . . . God and the devil are sitting at a big table. God tells the devil, ‘Move forward and be known.' And I was born.” He chuckled. “Be careful, Jackie,” he said sarcastically, “so it doesn't jump into you.”

* * *

Eddie kept calling me from prison. We had been having phone conversations for more than a year now, and of course, Patricia had used me to contact him even before that. I was pretty much the only human being he talked to. Sometimes we would just chat about mundane things. He told me what he ate, how he was feeling, what other prisoners were located in cells near to his own. He was housed by himself, and he liked it that way. He had no problem being alone with his thoughts. His cell was about eight and a half feet long and six feet wide, and his bed was a concrete slab covered with a thin mattress.

Other times, he would bring up other subjects. “Jackie, you listened to the newspapers when they ran my story, to all the movies, to experts on me and others just like me. Now listen to me. I am the Zodiac. They think it's safe. The public can sleep. How wrong are they . . .

“I have taught you about weapons. How I work alone in the dark. Studying the prey, developing my skills. I can easily leave and transform into anything.” Now it was my job to find him, he told me. He could change his color or his gender, but I would find him because his eyes—those all-black orbs—would always be the same.

“You're different. The others don't see me coming. You not only see me but feel my blood begin to pump; my mouth begin to water. The taste of blood, the feel of it on my skin, moving my tongue over my teeth. The stench of death that surrounds me could never be washed away. You'll look in the mirror and see me . . . You'll feel me touch your skin, that old familiar that I am now. When I take a deep breath, I can smell you. When I close my eyes, I can pull your body in. When I speak, I can sound just like you.”

He loved taunting me. “What are you going to say? ‘Hello, 911, the Zodiac Killer is able to move from person to person. He's haunting me.'” And he was right. What would I say to people who lived only in the “normal” world? People who couldn't see? He knew—and I knew—that the only time most people questioned these types of things was when a seemingly normal person went on a senseless rampage. There was no rhyme or reason for who the devil picked to live in, he told me. I knew that, too.

On the surface, Eddie was not one of those normal people anyway. He'd had a rough upbringing—no father in his life; a childhood in a bad, drug-infested neighborhood; very little education. There were reasons and rationales for why he had become such a killer. But then, there were the other things, things a bad childhood certainly couldn't explain. How did someone with practically no formal education and a technically low IQ teach himself how to assemble guns and make bullets? And how did he know about things like the occult when—back in the days before the Internet—such subjects were almost impossible to learn about without being part of an established occult group? He didn't learn any of these things on his own, that's how. He had his devil twin to help him.