Chapter 14 #2
And in a minute, she saw the arrival of the man, a form that didn’t arrive from any direction but rather slowly appeared before them, standing in front of Shelly, staring at her with sad and desperate eyes.
“I am so sorry; I don’t know … I believed, and I gave them the curses because I believed everything they said and …”
“Alan!” Shelly said softly, interrupting the spirit. “Please. What you did was wrong, but I wish you hadn’t taken your own life. And—”
“I have a chance!” he whispered. “A chance to redeem myself. I met a man … he had been homeless; he was killed by the giant shadow. And he said we’re here learning, and I will learn, but I …
I believed in what they said, I believed that the gods from many societies wanted you to die because you were going to destroy all that was good in the world. ”
“Wait, Alan,” Grant said, stepping forward, “did you kill the homeless man? Did you cause the accident that injured the CEO who supposedly killed George—or the man who was found at George Maynard’s house?”
The spirit shook his head. “I gave people information. I crashed into a few sites on a computer. I …” he paused, looking at Shelly. “You were to be my first.”
Shelly glanced over at Grant.
“But, Alan, you didn’t kill Shelly,” Skye reminded him. “You took your own life.”
“I was part of it,” Alan said.
Zach spoke up. “Alan, maybe you’re here to help us, help us all, because you know now that the truth isn’t in any ancient gods. You know that innocent people have been targeted.”
“Help us, Alan,” Grant told him. “Please.”
“I want to help you, but you don’t understand.
I started reading on the sites, and the more I read, the more people I listened to, the more I believed.
And if the gods or goddesses knew that what we were saying about the people in the curses, if they knew about them, then the curses left by the living allowed them to make sure the curses were followed, carried out, and people …
they died, left this earth, and caused no more trouble.
And I want to help you, but I … that’s what I know! ”
“You don’t know everything. But tell us what you do know about the sites,” Shelly said gently.
She might have been gifted with the ability to summon the dead, Grant thought, but she’d been gifted with much more—a true empathy for others that came through in her voice, her words, her eyes, and her manner. Alan Barker looked at her as if she might be redemption itself.
And who knew?
Maybe by helping them, he would find his way.
“The sites … but be careful. Don’t fall in!” the spirit of the man told them. “And remember, they’re on the dark web. I was working, working on a case, about a year ago, and that’s when I stumbled into the first. And they change, of course, because the rest of the world wouldn’t understand.”
“Right,” Zach murmured dryly. “Sorry, yes, I understand!” he said quickly.
“We saw a woman tonight,” Grant told him. “A woman named Natalie—”
“No one used their real name,” Alan’s spirit assured them.
“All right, someone old, in her nineties, someone who is having serious problems—”
“Nearing the light!” Alan said. “She sounds like someone who signs in as ‘Nearing the light.’”
“So, we have her computer—”
“Yes, she was talking about the tablets doing the will of the gods, and she thought a lot of them in ancient times were confused, and they were all kind of the same gods by different names in the ancient days when we were really set on the earth. But the Egyptian gods were the original, she believed, and we should refer to them by their proper names, though they were benign to us who knew them and would listen if we were confused,” Alan said excitedly.
Then he shook his head again, a deep, distressed frown knit into his face.
“I don’t know how. I thought … I thought I was doing as bidden, and then there was darkness and then light.
And it was suddenly clear, so clear, and I couldn’t understand how I’d been a scientist and gotten so …
had fallen so hard for such a conspiracy! ”
“But you’re here now, you’re trying to help us now,” Shelly told him. “And that means so very much!”
“I hope,” he said softly. “Look for the name she went by!” he told her. Then he smiled suddenly. “I can go!” he said softly. “I can go!”
Just as he had said, he was suddenly gone.
They shared a moment of silence, looking at one another.
Then Grant hurried to the table and set the computer down. It sprang to life immediately, but they needed passwords to get into sites.
“Hard drive—if we try too many things, it will lock us out,” Shelly murmured. “But if we get the right thing going with Angela, the techs there will figure it out or break into it!”
“Let me try one idea,” Grant said. “I won’t go the three that will cause a lockdown.”
“What’s your idea?”
“Her favorite things in the world. Egyptian gods,” Grant said.
“Sounds okay to me,” Zach murmured. “Which?”
“Key gods!” Shelly murmured.
“Horus and Anubis,” Skye said.
“All together; caps on the H and the A,” Shelly suggested.
Grant did as they suggested. And miraculously, they were in. They followed her history and found they could follow her straight into the black hole where her slipping mind had taken her.
“My God, we could read forever,” Grant murmured.
He’d glanced at the first site and noted it was just talking historically about the gods, goddesses, and pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
Someone then went into a discussion of Cleopatra, with some adherents admiring her and claiming that all she did she did for Egypt, while others condemned her, claiming she put sex above all else.
Nothing about curse tables.
Shelly was looking over his shoulder, reading silently along with him.
“We can read forever and not get everything—or anything—we need. Can we get this information to Angela?” Shelly suggested. “I mean, we can all keep reading, but they have an expert team up there that really knows what they’re doing, not to mention Angela herself.”
“We can; there are at least five sites here, with chats going on in all of them. I’m going to assume that several are benign, but …
” Grant murmured. “But our recently departed confused and redeemed spirit believed there might be something here. But his computers are at headquarters, where they probably shouldn’t be now—”
“You think more people in our own ranks might have gotten … ‘culted’ into all of this, too?” Zach asked.
“No, I think it was strange that a scientist did,” Grant said. “And besides—”
“All the information from Alan Barker’s computer has already been sent up the chain; whatever it is, they have it at Krewe headquarters. So, Angela is already on that info,” Skye said.
“True. So …” Grant murmured. He’d gone on to a new site. The participants there were discussing Akhenaten.
“So, why be on the dark web if they’re all so innocent?” Shelly murmured.
“Because there is something we’re not seeing,” Grant said.
“Not to mention I’m getting bleary-eyed and not sure how you guys are still awake,” Zach said. “Best thing to do is we get some sleep to deal with the fieldwork in the morning. Let the experts figure out what they can.”
“You guys go and get some sleep. And in the meantime, I’ll get all this info to Angela,” Grant said.
“That’s a plan. We can pick up where you two leave off,” Skye suggested.
“You get six hours!” Shelly told them.
Zach slipped an arm around Skye, waved, and hurried the two of them down the hall.
Shelly pulled up a chair so she could sit next to Grant while they continued to pore through the sites.
“There!” Shelly said, after they’d read for what seemed like forever.
“Oh, here—it’s an entry from our crazy lady,” Grant said, reading what Natalie had written to the group.
“Sometimes we’re far apart. But the gods are everywhere.
They enter human beings; we do know this.
Sometimes they’re called for special missions.
They must be protected. Protected as the earth, as our great forests and trees.
Words call out to them, and they hear; they hold us in life and in death.
But just as the earth is great, as the trees protect all, we protect the trees as we protect those who truly created the world, who gave us human flesh and blood.
In some cases, we have failed. Let one prevail, protect the great trees and the grass, and let the blood and bone and flesh that they have bestowed help us to enter into the world above, time in the trees, tomorrow in the trees, for the tablets have been read but perhaps need help. ”
“Okay, crazy, or …” Shelly began.
“She’s soliciting something. Someone,” he agreed.
“Someone to carry out a curse when the so-called magic of the curse has failed to give results.”
“Such as the curses against you,” Grant said worriedly.
She looked at him and smiled. “But I’m with you. And Zach and Skye, and we have the entire weight of several law enforcement agencies behind us. I’m not worried, Grant, and I’m not going to go hide anywhere!”
“I wasn’t suggesting such a thing. I was even thinking that …”
“Bait? That I might be great bait?”
“No, I was just thinking we all need to stay really close,” he told her earnestly. “Shelly—”
“We will stay close. But, Grant, it would be better for me to be ‘bait’ than for us all to go on and on with more people dying through this thing! There’s a machine here, someone with money, I believe, someone who seeks out the crazies in the chat rooms, and those who really want someone dead.
Okay, we discovered a couple of people—and Alan was so caught up in the belief that he was willing to die.
And, sadly, in death he discovered it was all a sham.
We’ve managed to get to a couple of the physical killers, but I think we need to go back to the beginning.
Who wanted George Maynard dead? Who wanted that enough to create this whole thing? ”
He looked down. His phone was ringing. As was Shelly’s.
Angela.