Chapter 6 #2
The doorframe is painted black and the words “your future awaits” are written across it in gold, swirly letters. There’s a chalkboard on the street that says, “crystals, energy healing, light work, tarot readings, spiritual guidance.”
Whenever we’ve walked past this place before, Max has scoffed and bemoaned who on earth would spend money on something like this, and I’ve agreed with him.
But I find I’ve stopped outside and am staring through the window.
Spiritual guidance. That does sound nice, doesn’t it?
I mean . . . I’ve got the gift card, right?
It would be rude not to. What did Sara say about it . . . “Enlightening and informative.”
OK, so Sara also once said that playing a dead body in Holby City was “cathartic,” but she’s got her life together more than I have, so who am I to judge?
A large, blond woman with a nose piercing and a lot of eyeliner sits inside.
She’s at the counter sewing beads onto some sort of purple blanket with the intensity of a surgeon at an operating table.
She looks up and sees me standing there.
Her eyes light up and she scuttles toward me like a spider, and from that moment I’m prey caught in her web.
It’s like when charity workers come to your house.
If you don’t say, “sorryIhavenomoneybye,” and slam the door in their faces before they start talking, you’re trapped.
It only takes five minutes before you’re donating money you don’t have to deaf children and then being eaten alive with guilt when you cancel the direct debit ten days later.
She approaches the door with a glint in her eyes. “Can I help you, dear?”
“Errr,” I say, staring up dubiously at the witchy markings painted on the window. She probably sacrifices small animals to Satan.
“I’m about to close.” She nods at the sign. “But you look like a soul in need of some direction, if I ever did see one. I’m Sue.”
Part of me knows this somewhat terrifying woman—Sue—is just trying to make a quick buck before she goes home, and I’m already cutting it fine to get back, but something about her use of the word “direction” feels like a little warm candle I want to stick my cold hands around.
Suddenly I want to put my head on her matronly bosom and have her stroke my hair and tell me everything is going to be OK.
I look at my phone. If it’s quick, I might still make it home on time. “How long will it take?”
“Fifteen minutes,” she assures me.
I look at my phone again. The wafting smell of aromatherapy oils feels irresistibly inviting. “Yes please,” I answer in a small voice. “I have a gift voucher.” I pull it out of my bag and hand it to her.
She looks less interested now she realizes she won’t be making extra money from this appointment, but she stands to one side and gestures with a sweeping hand for me to enter.
“Oof.” She shivers as I walk inside, drawing her shawl around her more tightly. “Your energy is supremely negative, my dear . . .” Her eyes drift above my head. “And your aura is really rather dingy. Can I interest you in a healing cleanse?”
“Errr, just the reading for today, thanks,” I say.
I follow her to the back of the room, where a table is set up with a deck of cards and a long, tapering candle, which she lights with a match. She dims the overhead lamp.
“You should seriously think about it,” she says, sliding a price list across the blue, star-covered tablecloth.
“Noted,” I reply.
She picks up a remote control and presses a button and the sound of trickling water fills the room.
Tranquil piano notes begin to play over it.
Sue closes her eyes. I feel weird staring at her when she has her eyes shut, so I do too.
We sit in silence for a moment with the soft, calming music playing.
Eventually, she speaks, and I open my eyes with a start.
“Hold these,” she says, pressing a deck of beautifully illustrated gold-embossed cards into my hands.
“What do I do?” I ask.
“Whatever you need to do in order to connect,” she answers. “The cards need to absorb your energy.”
I hold them in the same way I held my cousin Glen’s newborn baby Ethel. Awkwardly and at a distance from my chest.
She shakes her head—probably still thinking about my dingy aura—but doesn’t correct me. Eventually, she takes the cards back. She begins to shuffle them, holding them out toward me.
“Stop me when you feel it,” she commands. I get a little thrill; I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“Stop.” I put a hand up after a beat.
“Did you feel it?” She inspects me accusingly.
“No,” I admit.
“We go again.” She continues shuffling. Eventually I “feel” something—although I can’t be sure whether it’s magic or the social anxiety of sitting in total silence with a stranger—and ask her to stop again.
This time she lays a card out on the table. On it, two children are playing in a flower-filled garden, in front of a sweet little house, by a row of gold cups. “Let us begin with your past position. Ah, the Six of Cups.” She grimaces, looking me up and down.
“What?” I ask. “What does it mean?”
“The element of water,” she barks. “The suit of emotions. A nostalgic card of childhood harmony, old friends, and memories.”
“Oh. Isn’t that . . . good?”
“Look closer. See this child, holding the cup? It’s overgrown.
She’s wearing a fairy-tale costume that no longer fits, living in the past. This card, in this position, suggests to me that you have been stuck.
That to move forward, you need to reconcile your past memories with the reality of the present, in order to create the future. ”
She’s peering at me and I try to avoid eye contact. I feel like I’ve been put under a microscope. It’s so . . . accurate. I wasn’t actually expecting this to work. I don’t know what I was expecting when I stepped in here. But that card does feel eerily resonant. A tingle runs down my spine.
“Tell me, have you been burying your head in the sand? Allowing time to move around you, while you yourself remain frozen? Clinging to things long gone?”
I shiver, and nod. It’s like she’s encompassed everything I’m feeling in one card.
I’m fully afraid now. Maybe Sara was right about this.
Maybe there is such a thing as witchcraft.
She lays a second card on the table and looks aghast. Lightning crashes into a building, smoke rises into the sky, and bricks break away, revealing large, gaping holes.
People leap from the burning structure and hurtle toward the ground.
That can’t be good.
“What? What is it?!”
“The Tower,” she whispers. “Your present position. Major Arcana. The Minor Arcana suits—Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles—are nothing to the Major Arcana. These are the most impactful life lessons that resonate throughout your entire consciousness, transforming your whole being and marking the soul’s journey to enlightenment. ”
When I look confused, she adds, “The big shit.”
“Right,” I say. “Well, what does the Tower mean?”
“It means, if you’ve been shutting yourself away in an ivory tower, you’re coming back down to earth with a bump.” I swear she sounds gleeful. “The Tower is a necessary fall from grace, the burning to the ground of what we thought we knew, the destruction of everything we’ve built.”
“Right, so, nothing too intense, then,” I joke feebly, trying to lighten the mood. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.
“I would guess, from this card, that currently everything is coming crashing down around you. Probably as a direct result of remaining here, for too long.” She points at the Six of Cups.
I gulp as fear strikes into my heart. Everything is coming crashing down around me. This is genuinely spooky.
“Does this sound familiar?” she asks.
I nod.
“It’s not so bad,” she adds in a gentler tone.
Probably remembering the potential one-star Google review coming her way.
“In order that our horizons can expand, it is sometimes necessary, first, to tear down the walls holding us in. This card tells us that in order to rebuild, the total obliteration of our current circumstances is necessary. Sometimes, this includes illusory prisons of our own making. But destruction is the first step on the path to reconstruction.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, not in the least bit comforted. I can’t stop staring at the haunting expressions of the people on the card as they jump from the burning building.
She must sense this, because she quickly moves on to the next card. “And your future,” she says brightly, laying down a card with a picture of a skull that says “DEATH” on it in big, black letters.
“Death?!” I shriek, jumping up from the table. “Death?!”
“Please, sit down . . .”
“Are you telling me I’m going to die?!” I wail.
“Please, do remain calm . . .”
“Calm?!” I yell, plagued with images of myself lying in a casket.
Of my own tombstone. “Here Lies Becky: She Always Made Curfew.” “I can’t die .
. . I haven’t lived!” I shout dramatically.
“I still live at my mother’s house. I’ve never had a job I enjoy.
I don’t have a meaningful romantic relationship.
My mates are leaving me behind. I’m forever stuck in the role of ‘chaotic bi friend’ in the movie of my own life. ”
Sue is frustratingly silent. She listens to my rant pensively. I so badly want her to tell me I’m not going to die, but she doesn’t.
“Tell me,” she says slowly. “If you knew you were going to die, what would you do differently?”
“Are you saying I am going to die?!” I whisper quietly, sitting back down in the chair opposite her.
Once again, she says nothing. Oh my God.
Oh my God.
“If you were dying, what would you do?” she asks again.
“I would . . . I would do something. Anything,” I answer.
She nods. “Then . . . yes. I’m afraid so.”