Chapter Eighteen Linda
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LINDA
She sat in her sedan two blocks away from Rayo Courant’s home on Thirty-Fifth Street. Linda could barely control the fury that took over when she read Elton’s latest message.
We’re checking Rayo’s background, we’ll figure out what the connection is. Things are tense, I know, but let’s not jump to any hasty conclusions…
Elton spouted bullshit, as per usual.
It was no coincidence that twenty-five of the Afflicted had engaged with Rayo in some professional capacity, mostly as his clients.
Linda had done a thorough background check on the man.
He was born and raised in Philly to immigrant parents who’d made their way to the States from Martinique and Jamaica.
Rayo had gone to UPenn, earned both his bachelor’s and master’s there in psychology, and continued on with graduate work in the district.
Had run his own practice for more than a decade.
Super successful. On his Psychology Today profile, he listed himself as open to new age modalities, reminiscent of what he’d said as a guest on MCURY Live, and had started to give lectures about various spiritual practices from the Diaspora while running a private practice from his home in Georgetown.
Which is why she’d decided to stage an impromptu stakeout close to his property.
She had inadvertently sent her own clients to this man who was hurting people…
somehow. Linda kicked herself for not recognizing his name, for not connecting the dots earlier.
She continued to scan the video clips of Rayo she’d found, searched for any clues that would connect him to the Afflicted.
Over the past few years, he’d kept a relatively low profile, hadn’t really made public appearances other than a couple of commencement speeches for local colleges.
It was after the Ghost Equinox that he began to blow up.
On YouTube channels, on evening news guest spots, on afternoon talk shows, which was when she first spotted him at Smithie’s.
She stopped at one of Rayo’s TED Talks. The description under the clip indicated that the event was recorded on December 17, 2024. His locs were done up in a bun, his green button-down slightly open at the top, revealing several necklaces and the contours of his chest. A striking figure.
“Our collective experience is inherently mysterious, mystical,” he said in the clip.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to explore what lies on uncharted horizons, to create within our core a more complex understanding of the world around us, even as we remember that which makes us intrinsically human.
The need to be seen, for intimacy, to be close to each other… ”
Rayo didn’t sound significantly different from what he’d spouted on the TV screen at Smithie’s. What he was selling, presumably the chance to enroll in a seminar. Or maybe there was a book he was hawking. She reviewed the MCURY Live clip on the laptop she’d wedged against the steering wheel.
Linda once again listened to his words, homed in on his body language. Nothing set off any alarm bells. Sure, Rayo was smug, had a self-inflated, condescending air. An attitude she’d seen before when it came to those who were educated and handsome and had their ass licked everywhere they went.
She continued to scrutinize him. What was she missing?
She glimpsed the medallion hung around his neck, something she’d offhandedly noticed when she first saw him on television but which had been hard to discern from a distance. A medallion shaped like a sun.
Linda paused the video. Zoomed in. The medallion, or amulet, or whatever it was… the round face with its eyes closed, mouth open… a replica of the object they’d found in Pastor Samuelson’s bedroom.
She zoomed in closer, peered at the amulet for a few more seconds, and then switched back over to the tab she still had open with Rayo’s TED Talk. He wore several necklaces but the amulet was nowhere to be seen.
Linda picked up her phone and called Fonsi. The line went straight to voicemail. She hung up, texted him.
Samuelson’s amulet. Call me, msg me, need intel on that ASAP ASAP ASAP. Same amulet worn by therapist-life coach Rayo Courant.
She then took a screenshot of the amulet around Rayo’s neck and sent it to Fonsi as well.
Linda plugged in a search for sun amulets, gold amulets, sun talismans, ghostly talismans…
mostly finding references to a wide assortment of museum and gallery pieces.
She even put the terms into an AI search, which she loathed, rarely doing so even with her agency clients.
Nothing. The chance of a general web search discovering something that would provide real answers, close to nil.
Linda once again combed through the images and videos she’d gathered of Rayo outside of his social media platforms, which she’d bookmarked as well.
She made sure to take screenshots of all his appearances and place them in a special file, paying attention to dates and locations.
One image caught her eye. Rayo stood with several people as part of a group shot outside of the Americas Society on New York’s East Side.
The pic was dated Tuesday, March 18. One day before the skies had turned red above the Big Apple, two days before the actual ghost invasion on the Equinox.
Questions swam in her mind. Had Rayo been on a special trip?
Had he managed to get out of New York before spirits arrived or had he been stuck there, scared out of his wits?
Was this why he was suddenly invested in explaining supernatural phenomena to a wider audience, not just his clients? Something more than an easy cash grab?
Linda scanned through the wall of images she had of Rayo as the result of all her searches, eyes peeled for the amulet.
Her efforts yielded nothing so she started a fresh search with different terms. She landed on a picture someone had taken of him at one of his group discussions about learning to cope with a new, scary spectral world.
Date of event: April 10. The participants’ faces were blocked out by smiling emojis, but not Rayo’s.
There on his neck, the medallion once again.
And there behind him… she zoomed in… a table full of the same amulets.
Linda presumed they were available for people to purchase or take for free.
She took a screenshot and sent the image to Fonsi as well.
She gathered herself and breathed, tried to remain calm as adrenaline flooded her system. There was something there, she was certain. But the answer eluded her. The frustration of not having the solution for what was staring her in the face, hidden in plain sight… a feeling she detested.
Her phone chimed. It was 6:45. She took out her binoculars and zoomed in on Rayo’s house, which she’d been doing every fifteen minutes to half an hour.
Sure enough, one of his clients, a man who’d entered his property presumably for a 6:00 p.m. appointment, had just left.
Linda had stationed herself in her vehicle since 3:47 p.m., imagining that at some point, Rayo would have his last client for the day.
Minutes passed; 7:00 p.m. came along. No one else entered his property.
Linda weighed her options. She could go in there, confront Rayo, and say…
what, exactly? She didn’t understand the implications of the evidence they’d gathered; it would be like charging in there and declaring, I know you’re up to something evil, that you’re behind…
something with the Afflicted. And I have no idea what.
Subtlety was required. These were special circumstances.
Linda stared out at the row of houses on the Georgetown street, wishing for once that her life didn’t have to be complicated. That she had never discovered her gift of empathy. What if she’d had a simpler, more pedestrian existence?
She sighed, closed the laptop, and rested her head on the steering wheel.
For years, Linda had never used her psychic gifts during her standard investigations, only using her power in ritual with her Broken Hearts.
A weird source of pride that made her feel legit.
But now… she was going to break her oath to Imani.
She located her girl’s voice in her head.
I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m sorry… I know I promised I’d never do this again.
Linda bundled up her power, let it sit in her mind and chest and torso.
She inhaled, exhaled, and sent her thoughts out to Rayo’s place.
A wave of invisible energy floated through the ether that no one would be able to detect, save for another empath.
His house sat two blocks away, hundreds of yards north.
She had never traveled such a distance with her empathy, hadn’t used her gift in this way in so long.
Linda pushed, and pushed, and used her mind’s eye to scan the house.
She sensed that Rayo was in the basement, in his office.
Where he held sessions with his clients, she suspected.
Linda took a moment to focus her empathy and steady her psyche, still aware of her body sitting in the sedan down the street.
She heard the softness of Rayo’s breathing, felt the sensation of his palms on his knees as if they were own.
Her body was particularly vulnerable in this state if anyone were to approach her car from the street.
Couldn’t be helped. She took in the scene from Rayo’s perspective.
Her empathy, an unseen, weightless force that had settled onto his consciousness, skimming its surface.
He was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed.
Meditating perhaps? She thought he would be taking notes after his last client, but maybe this was his way of centering after listening to folks’ problems all day.
He opened his eyes. Linda took in his office in real time. A library of books, images of a sun. There in the corner once again, the amulet…
She needed to probe a bit deeper into his mind, to see what she could find in terms of his connection to the charm. She prepared to dive…
And there Linda felt it, a jolting, bitter frost. A coldness both ephemeral and heavy. Shadow. Clogging her senses. Terrifying, bleak.
Evil.
A beast that wanted to devour her, that wanted to take everything she had.
That thing… it knew she was there.
She pulled back her empathy, fast. Returning her power to her body so quickly, a shock. She spasmed in the car. She knocked her laptop onto the floor.
“My… my God,” she muttered. “Fuck! FUCK!”
Linda took a moment, made sure that she felt like herself. Breathed in and out, in and out. And then she saw what was on the horizon.
Something was slowly streaking from Rayo’s property, a dark mist that seemed to be leaking from his windows, from the shingles of the roof and siding of his house. A gigantic cloud that covered part of the block. Smoky and obsidian with flickering red eyes.
Linda knew in her gut, no question, the shadow was coming for her.
A woman walking her Bolognese screamed at the top of her lungs, the sound muted by the sedan’s closed windows.
Linda pulled away from the curb and banged into an SUV parked behind her, setting off its alarm.
She adjusted her car and barreled into the street.
She drove fast as she could, having no idea how quickly the thing could move.
If it could pass through physical barriers like windows and a roof, stood to reason that it could pass through car doors. If it could…
Linda looked at her rearview mirror. The thing vanished for a moment, shot past her sedan, and veered into the thick of traffic.
She eased on the gas, frantically scanning intersections and crosswalks to see if there was a side street she could turn into to leave the traffic behind, to lure the shadow away.
Several pedestrians were staring and pointing at the thing in the sky. A few began to run.
The shadow gathered in the distance, momentarily becoming a murky cloud before it reshaped itself into a long, sharp point… a missile that swooped back toward Linda. It collided with the front of her sedan, into the windshield, cracking the glass.
Becoming wispy and fluid once again, the shadow recoiled and weaved in between cars.
Several vehicles began to veer from their lanes.
A man in a convertible ducked down as the entity flitted above his head.
The shadow spun around and shot itself back into Linda’s windshield, once, twice, three times.
The glass finally shattered and flew into her face right as she covered her eyes with her arm.
“Shit… shit,” she screamed. She fumbled for the side of her blazer, tried to grab her gun without losing control of the car. “Motherfucka!”
The smoky thing grabbed Linda by her neck with a frosty tendril. Its blinding red eyes bored into hers. The heat from its gaze blistered her cheeks and mouth. She could barely see the road, barely see her proximity to other cars. She heard more shouting. Pedestrians.
Linda braced herself and brought forth her gift, pushed back with her empathy with all her might against the shadow. Imagined the thing being stretched far and wide, so far and wide that it would be impossible for it to maintain cohesion.
The creature shrieked with an unearthly, ear-piercing sound. And then it blew apart, just as she’d imagined, its fiery eyes exploding in Linda’s face. She was truly blinded now, her face throbbing with pain as if she’d run into a wall.
Linda gripped her steering wheel tight. She heard a squishy thud. A man shouted in agony. She tried to imagine where the curb might be, tried to veer to the right before she heard another crash and felt herself flipped over, flung hard to the left.
And then… darkness.