Outview (13 page)

“What did my dad do with his?”

“Your dad rejected it, which isn’t easy
because it keeps coming up. Still, he managed to keep it under control. Not me.
I embraced it, but I’ve had a tough time with this human dimension. I’m the
kind of nutty psychic who gives nutty psychics a bad name. Married four times,
I like my wine a little too much. Messed up my life pretty good, I guess. It
can be hell keeping it all straight with worlds always colliding. I’ve been
trying to make amends by seeing Dusty through his dark time.”

“How’s he doing? I mean, really?”

“I gotta tell you, honey, it’s not all
peaches and cream. I’ve been able to keep him somewhat sane by showing him ways
to control his past life visions, and he’s also been able to do some very
limited astral traveling. But he’s drowning in toxins, and we’re going to lose
him if he doesn’t get out of there very soon.”

“That’s what I think. We’re going to figure
out a way. Will you help?”

“You betcha. I’ll lead the charge, honey.”

“What about showing me some of those tricks
about controlling past lives. I call those visions ‘Outviews.’ And astral traveling?
My friend Amber mentioned something about that, but is it really possible?”

“Nate, I’ll give you as much time as you’re
willing to devote. I’ll show you everything I know. And Kyle, don’t worry, I’m
not as kooky as I look,” she said, smiling at him.

“No, I don’t think you are, I mean--”

“Didn’t you read the sign out front? I know
what you’re thinking. I also know your energy is very powerful. And Linh, you
need to study your dreams, for you it’s the way to your soul. I’d love to read
some of your poetry.”

We all looked at each other.

“How is it I’ve never known you were a
psychic?”

“Your mother didn’t want you boys to know,
so your dad made me promise never to mention it.”

“What part of my life is true?”

“Honey, is
any
part of anyone’s life
true or real?” She sang the word “real” as she said it.

“I’m obviously not the one to ask. Aunt
Rose, can I borrow a phone?”

“Sure, my cell should be out on the hall
table.”

“How about I do a reading for you, Linh?” Rose
said as I was walking out.

I found her phone on the table next to a
deck of tarot cards and a stack of her flyers. “Amber, it’s Nate.”

“You called! How are you? Where are you?”

“We’re at my aunt’s house in Merlin. You’d
love her; she’s a psychic.”

“Your aunt’s a psychic? Why am I not
surprised? She should be able to help you a lot. How’d you run into her?”

“That’s a long story. Actually my aunt’s a
long story. I’ll tell you all about her when we get back.”

“And Dustin?”

“I have to get him out. He’s as sane as
me.”

“I’ll resist the joke.” She laughed. “What’s
the plan?”

“I’m still working on it. How’s it going
with your mom and sister?”

“It’s been nice, really. We’re having a
good time. I miss you though.”

Rose did a reading for Linh, while Kyle and
I raided our stash of candy. Linh said later that Rose told her stuff no one
else knew about her and that Rose even described some of Kyle’s past in
Vietnam. She said Linh would come into her own spiritual power, beginning with
dream messages. “Nate, she said you would be my teacher, that you would teach Kyle,
too. She said you’re very powerful. Actually, she stressed
extremely
powerful.”

22

Rose insisted on buying us lunch. We
ordered Chinese, delivered while she explained vortexes. “You’ve heard of
Sedona?”

“In Arizona?” Linh asked.

“Good girl. It’s probably the best-known
area for vortexes, even though they’re doing a good job of crowding out the
energy with condos, golf courses, and tourist traps. But still, they’re there.
Earth’s not just a rock moving through space with a bunch of water, trees, and
people. It’s energy. And up until a few thousand years ago, we used to interact
with that energy.”

“Then a vortex is a place where we interact
with the earth?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s putting it simply but
accurately. Vortexes are spots where the concentrated energy from the planet
and the universe is really present.”

“What comes from the interaction?” Kyle
asked.

“Healing, transformation, awareness, great
and positive things. Even if you don’t believe in anything, a vortex feels
intensely powerful because it’s like a direct connection to the power of your
soul.”

“How do you find them?”

“They’re not secret. I’ll give you a list
of all the known ones, but many, many more haven’t been rediscovered.”

“What about dimensional doorways?”

“That’s a little beyond me. I believe it’s
where you can
physically
move from one place to another, even to a whole
different dimension. But I’ve never done it. I have had luck on the astral,
though. That’s the connection of souls, the unconscious minds as one, our
closest plane. We are wrapped in and surrounded by it. The astral is the
invisible stuff that binds this material existence and connects it to all
else.”

“So, you can travel through your mind?”

“Oh, yes. Everything is connected, so once
you tap into your subconscious, you can go almost anywhere, even to past lives,
like what you call Outviews. You’re actually astral traveling.”

“But I could do it within this life, too?”

“Sure, I visit Dusty that way sometimes. It’s
the same way your dad told me he’d been murdered. Anyone can do it.”

“How?” Linh asked.

“Like anything else, sweet one. Practice.”

“Can you show us?” Kyle asked.

“I’d love to, but it takes time, so why don’t
we do that on another visit? You all come up early, and we’ll spend a day. I’ll
get a little course prepared.”

“Can we bring another friend?” Linh asked
Rose. “Nate, Amber would love to learn.”

“Bring a whole party if you like,” Rose
said. We were all very excited and decided on the following Saturday.

We left around two-thirty, which meant we’d
make Brookings by five o’clock. Back on the interstate, I couldn’t shake the
strangeness of the Outview from last night. Rose’s talk of vortexes and the
astral made me wonder just where we were on the plane. Or what was actually happening.
“What if this is all a dream?” I suggested.

“We can’t all be having the same dream,”
Linh said.

“How do you know that? Nothing really seems
certain anymore.”

“We could all be insane,” Kyle said. “I saw
this movie once . . . ”

“Even with all that has happened to me
recently, last night seemed extra weird.”

“Last night? What about the Old Man of the
Lake? And Aunt Rose seeing your dad? This whole trip’s been weird,” Kyle said,
pulling into a gas station to fill up.

Heading into the convenience store, I was
stopped by an attractive young woman coming out who dropped her purse. Its
contents spilled onto the sidewalk; I stepped on a stray quarter.

“Here you go.” I handed it to her as she
pushed a hairbrush into her bag.

“Thanks.” She looked up at me. “Do you ever
feel like it’s all a dream?”

“What did you say?” A wave of dizziness hit
and my vision blurred, as if someone had just smeared a streak across the whole
front of the store. Everything ran in reverse. Her purse emptied again. The
coin flew back under my shoe and then rolled backward. All her stuff jumped
from the ground back into her purse and she went backward into the store. A
jolt, a smear and she came out again as if nothing had happened. She smiled at
me and was going to walk on without a word.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know me?”

“Don’t be silly, Nate, of course I do.”

“Where do I know you from? What just
happened?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t remember. But don’t worry,
you will. I’ll see you soon.”

“Wait,” I said.

“Don’t worry so much,” she repeated. “Once
you’re open, everything is visible. Keep looking; you’ll be amazed.”

She walked behind a delivery truck and was
gone once it moved. I went in for a soda and a couple of packs of peanut butter
cups, but it took a long time for me to make up my mind whether to get them
with or without crunchy nuts, jumbo sized, minis, regulars or the white ones.
Picking a soda also proved difficult. I walked into a display of sunglasses and
bumped into a truck driver. Linh came in to check on me, but by then I was in
line. She gave me the “we were worried you might have been chased by ghosts
again” look and escorted me back to the car. I decided not to tell them about
the woman with the purse and also didn’t mention the leopard or gazelles that
made appearances along the way.

It took more than an hour to locate someone
in Brookings who could tell us how to find Tea Leaf Beach. We were beginning to
think it and the guy we were supposed to meet didn’t exist. The guy at the
outdoor shop was surprised. “Not too many people know about Tea Leaf,” he said,
and then shared the secret closely guarded among locals. It made sense no one
knew about it, the only access was hidden behind a guardrail along the busy
coastal highway. After that, a steep path down takes about twenty-five minutes
to navigate.

Finding Amber’s beach house was much
easier. Up a winding road through a security gate with a four-digit code, still
set to the year her divorced parents married. The wooden house sat on a ridge.
You couldn’t see the ocean until you were inside or on the deck, but then the
view was sweeping.

I called Amber to let her know we’d found
it and how much we all loved the place. But really I wanted her to know that
Aunt Rose was going to teach us about astral traveling and more on the following
Saturday. “Can you come?”

“I can’t wait!” she squealed.

While eating the last of our Station food
and watching the sun go down, we speculated about our mysterious morning
meeting, which was quite early because low tide was at 7:19 a.m. and sunrise at
6:43 a.m. In case there wasn’t enough light to see the trail, I put flashlights
in our packs.

We looked over the stuff from my dad’s desk
again. Linh thought her dad might be able to help with the coded writings, and Kyle
said he had some tools at home that could pull the inlays out of the box. We
had no good ideas about the carved wooden piece but thought of taking it to an
antique dealer. I still had the bluish-black stone from the Old Man. It was
beautiful but otherwise didn’t seem important.

Kyle went to sleep first, but I was
reluctant. Linh stayed up, and we wrapped together in a blanket on the deck.
The ocean was far enough away that the surf couldn’t be heard, but there was
enough moonlight to see it churning out to the horizon. Unaware that everything
was about to change, we talked at length about all that had happened before
falling asleep.

23

Sunday, September 21 (Equinox)

After going up and down the highway several
times, Kyle finally spotted the correct section of guardrail. There was barely
enough room to pull the car off the road. We’d been expecting to see another
vehicle belonging to the man we were meeting, but there was none. The trailhead
was nearly impossible to see among the thick ferns, lush undergrowth, and dim
light. Our flashlights lit the narrow path through the primeval forest. Large
banana slugs left slimy trails, and sticky spider webs grabbed our sleeves. No
one spoke except for the occasional, “This is so beautiful.” The forest hushed
us. Everything was fantastically green, in so many different shades. The trail dropped
more than five hundred feet in about a mile, making for a steep and slippery
descent.

A mountain lion crossed about sixty feet in
front of us. “Whoa!” I said, holding out my arm to stop Kyle who was right behind
me.

“I saw it, too,” he said.

“What was it? I just caught a blur of
something.” Linh asked.

“A mountain lion,” Kyle whispered.

“Should we turn back?” she whispered. Just
then the sun broke though in shafts of white light fully illuminating parts of
the forest that had been hidden.

“Let’s just start being a little noisier
from now on,” I said. “I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who saw it this time. You
guys would have thought it was just another shapeshifter.”

“Maybe it was. I’m not sure of anything
anymore,” Kyle replied.

Around the next switchback, a stream joined
the trail and we crossed crude log platforms. The sound of waves filled the
quiet forest, glorious. A few minutes later, we emerged from the trees and
walked along an edgy cliff, the path, no more than a foot wide, but thick
foliage acted as a railing. The trees retreated as the ocean came into view, a
breathtaking sight. We sipped water. Below was a spectacular cove, with huge
black monoliths rising from the surf like guardians of the coast. Their exotic
shapes, the cliffs framing the beach, and the tropical-like forest felt like a
coastal jungle of Mexico. Photos didn’t capture the scene, and I was too
nervous anyway to get anything good.