Chapter Two. House of Four Seasons
(3)
 My name is Ray. I'm the ghost of a man who was brutally murdered in Balboa Park, San Diego, after being stood up by his fiance, Tamsin (Thomasina), who was having an affair with a man named Marcus at her office. I befriended the ghost of a young woman named Lolo (actually Louise Maurian-Wheeler from Montreal, an art student at San Diego State University), who was waitressing at the Park Boulevard Café when a crazy guy came in and stabbed her to death. Dear Lolo. Poor Lolo. We had some adventures in the world inbetween the worlds of the living and of the dead, and she was reunited with her fiancee, Henri, from parallel world in which he had died, and the two children they were meant to have, from yet another parallel world in which both Lolo and Henri died, but the children were orphaned.
Through the good offices of a shaman named Johannes Rector, who runs a soul shop in Loma Portal near the Pacific Ocean, they were united in a happy ghost family. As for me, Rector helped me rescue the ghost of a Tamsin in a parallel world. That Tamsin loved me very much and was not having an affair with another man, so my new and totally better Tamsin and I live in our own netherworldly cottage not far from Lolo and Henri, actually. We see them at least once or twice a week. Each of us also does certain jobs for Rector.
Johannes Rector is the local fixer, shaman, what have you. He is an always elegantly dressed, dark-skinned man with short, kinky white hair and eyes the color of maple syrup. He is tallish, handsome-ish, and wiry-ish, without unduly calling attention to his prowess. He has the hands of a boxer, the fingers of a pianist, and the eyes of a surgeon who cares about his patients. He is good to work for. He is mortal, and will one day be replaced by someone we can only hope shares his great qualities. Like everyone else, he has at least one bad trait. He can be vengeful. You rarely see that side of him. Pray you don't.
Rector is director of Compass News, which gets its name from the four points of the compass (N, E, W, S). He is that rare living person who can see dead people, speak with them, walk in their world—negotiate, scheme, fix things. Compass News is not a media organization, as the name might suggest, but a fixer shop in Dark San Diego where (as the old Cream song about a white room says) the shadows run from themselves.
One day, not long after my Tamsin and I reunited, we were walking in Balboa Park, not far from where she was murdered. Ghosts are drawn to the place where they died, because it is the focal point of the eternal present they live in before moving past. Lolo likes to call it Days of Craze. Aside from the usual anniversary jitters that draw you there every year on that hour of that day, something may set you off. For no apparent reason, you may get really nuts and run like blur, or catapult through the air like a comet (visible only to the denizens of the Between), and thrash around hysterically in a smoke of your own terror and madness at the spot where life suddenly left you. It happens to all of us ghosts. The others-centaurs, vampires, even the dully lumbering ghouls who walk the city's neighborhoods on Hallow E'en night—laugh when they see it happening. As for us ghosts, we get over it quickly. We laugh, shrug, and go back to where we left off before the Days of Craze.
|
Thank you for reading. If you love it, tell your friends. Please post a favorable review at Amazon, Good Reads, and other online resources. If you want to thank the author, you may also buy a copy for the low price of a cup of coffee. It's called Read-a-Latte: similar (or lower) price as a latte at your favorite coffeeshop, but the book lasts forever while the beverage is quickly gone. Thank you (JTC).
|
TOP
|
MAIN
Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
|
