The Haunting of the Gemini (12 page)

The restaurant's kitchen door swung open and the red ball I had seen the little girl carrying came bouncing straight toward me. I jumped away from the table, knocking things over, trying to get away. Will grabbed my arm, threw down enough money to cover the dinner and my antics, and dragged my sobbing self out to the sidewalk. He wrapped his arms around me.

“Jackie, you're not alone. You never were. And I'm not going to let anything or anyone hurt you. I made that promise a lifetime ago.”

We started to walk, and I started to talk. I told him of the horrible things I was seeing, of trying to mimic ordinary people and their actions because I was unable to act normally.

“I'm being pulled from both sides. There is this guy who just appears out of nowhere, dressed in black and holding me hostage,” I said. “And then there's this woman, who makes me do things I don't want to, and this little girl who I've seen my whole life. She's somehow in the thick of it. The guy wants the woman. And the child and the woman both keep running.”

Will listened carefully—like he always did—and waited for me to continue. When I didn't, he decided to push the subject further himself.

“Jackie,” he said slowly, “I found a large storage box tied up and hidden in the back of the garage. How do you know the New York City Zodiac?”

I felt like I'd been busted. Deny, deny, deny.

“I don't know him. How would I know him? The woman who sometimes controls me knows him.”

Will fired back. “How did he get our address? Why do you hide his letters? Drawings, his hair—”

“She gave the address to him! Maybe she wants answers, maybe she wants . . .” I stopped. “Maybe . . . she wants freedom.” I heard the words come out, but it didn't sound like me. It was a sad voice that ran over mine, like two people talking at once. I stood on the sidewalk and wondered about what I had just heard put into words.

Will, still concerned and upset, stomped inside to take a shower, and I headed off to check on the Zodiac box. I ran downstairs to the garage the minute I heard the water go on. I locked the door behind me and pulled out the box. I needed to make sure nothing was gone. Or, more accurately, that nothing had escaped.

The single lightbulb hanging above me began to crackle. I looked up at it and heard a quick scrape on the concrete floor behind a large CD rack we stored down here. Then came a gurgling sound mixed with laughter. I followed it around the CD rack, and there she was. Patricia, bent into a position on my garage floor that was not humanly possible—if one were alive.

Her face was wet and gray and framed by her tangled, stringy hair. Her eye sockets looked like dark holes, and she foamed at the mouth, spitting words at me I couldn't understand. She was strapped into a straitjacket and was struggling to free herself. She tried to stand, with the inhuman strength I have only ever seen during the horrifying events of an exorcism.

I fell backward in terror and must have screamed, because I heard Joanne and then Will trying to get into the garage through the main car door. Will yelled at Joanne to get out of the way. They punched at the code panel, and the door began to rise. Will slid underneath and rushed past me. No, right through me. I looked down at myself and stretched out my arms. They couldn't see me or hear me. They disappeared behind the oversize CD tower.

I turned back toward the garage door as it finished raising up. And there he was. The tall man in black, holding a large knife. I turned and saw Will and Joanne on their knees, struggling with something. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I turned back to the man, who grinned.

“Only I can hear you,” he said. “Take the knife, Jackie, and join me forever. Feel the power; let me live in you. You are my Gemini. We are all two. We are all evil. Let me wrap my arms around you.”

I did not want to be here. I did not want to be part of this. I felt so alone. And then someone took my hand. I looked down and saw the little girl in the yellow raincoat looking up at me, a spirit beside me.

“He's the stranger, isn't he?” she asked, looking up at me.

I saw the strangulation marks around her neck. And I remembered.

* * *

A calendar hung on the kitchen wall. November 1950. The picture was of little puppy dogs playing in a red basket. The room was dark, lit only by the candles on a birthday cake in the middle of the table. A little girl sat in front of it, perched up on her knees, and leaned forward to blow them out. Her father told her to make a wish. Then her mother stopped her and ran to retrieve another present to add to the pile.

“I have one more surprise for you,” she said, peeling back the wrapping. It was a yellow raincoat.

“Oh, Mommy, thank you so much! I love it! I love it! Can I wear it today? Please, Mommy?”

“We'll see,” the mother said, smiling at her beautiful birthday girl. “Now, blow those candles out. You're a big girl now.”

She leaned forward again, clutching her worn teddy bear, and blew.

The lights went out. Something leaned in very close and whispered a wish.
I'm coming back.

The lights came on, and the kitchen had changed. The party was gone. The calendar hung crookedly on its peg. The mother and father sat huddled together at the table. The mother clutched at the raincoat and started screaming.

“Who took my daughter? I want her back. This is all I have of my baby . . . Someone took our baby girl.”

The girl stood next to me as we watched the scene. The raincoat she wore was dripping with rain. The drops became blood and pooled around my feet. I couldn't move. She took my hand.

“I was killed by a man,” she said. I looked into her eyes and she showed me.

* * *

Now, as I heard Will and Joanne struggling behind me, I knew they couldn't see or hear me. I knew how the dead felt. I knew why they so readily came to me. They just wanted someone to listen. And dear God, right now, so did I. I was just like that little girl next to me. I might
be
that girl next to me. I held her hand, that little girl who couldn't run, who couldn't get away. Just like Patricia, and just like me.

And she had run to the only person who could see her. I closed my eyes to shut out the Zodiac standing in my garage and took a breath. The air came out in a rush as my eyes flew open, and I saw Will and Joanne standing over me. I was lying on the floor of my garage—behind the CD tower—kicking and screaming.

“It's okay. It's only us,” Will said, holding his hands up so I could see them. “Look, I have nothing. It's me.”

Joanne sank down on the floor next to me, her eyes wide. I stopped screaming and started crying. Will asked if I'd fallen and gotten hurt. I shook my head no and managed to ask, “What happened?”

They both had heard bloodcurdling screams coming from the garage. It didn't sound like me, and they thought someone had broken into the house. They had found me in the corner in a trans-medium state—I was rocking back and forth and talking in two different voices, a woman and a man who seemed to be arguing.

As I calmed down, Will turned to the large sketch pad that lay next to me. On it, I had scrawled in red crayon:

My name used to be Jane. I'm eight years old, and I was murdered, too.

Will carefully picked up the pad. Underneath it was one of my large kitchen knives. The knife was all scratched, and the concrete floor around me had deep gouges in it. Will snatched it quickly and moved it away from me. I hung my head.

“I'm going to get put away again,” I said weakly.

Both my husband and my daughter stared at me, uncomprehending.

“What! Jackie, why would you say that?” Will said. He knew that I had never been “put away” for anything in my entire life.

My voice was barely audible. “I don't know . . . because
she
was . . .”

Will—still carefully holding the knife away from me—told Joanne to take me upstairs to bed while he cleaned up the mess.

“No!” I leaped to my feet. “I want everything back, now!” I grabbed everything and packed it away in the box. “I'm telling you both, stay away from my things, or he'll kill you.”

As I packed everything away and tried to catch my breath, a startling realization took hold of me. The tall man in black was the twin of the Zodiac. He was the devil behind Eddie's meek smile. It wasn't enough to murder; he had to keep their souls. He had to keep his victims from finding the arms of God. It was a double win. He victimized them for all eternity and delivered a slap to the face of the Almighty. Is there a war between heaven and hell? You bet there is.

And Eddie was an exceptional soldier. The devil took the features of his DNA—his mirrored image—and left that concrete cell to finish his work. Eddie's physical body could not leave, but that powerful devil inside him was free. He could walk along undetected in order to collect more trophies, and reclaim the one who got away.

TWELVE

At one time or another, we all have something in common—we all get stuck. We all get in our own way. Advanced degrees and overflowing bank accounts can't help. Sometimes, the more we have, the more cynical we become. We may find ourselves acting differently, becoming distant and distracted. It can happen at any age, to any one of us. It can disguise itself as unhappiness, emptiness. Often we see it but blame others. We can begin to destroy important relationships in the quest to find the answer to that single word—
why?

Some of us have no choice but to answer this question. The glass of water that represents your soul starts to evaporate. Every morning, you crawl out of bed to examine the glass and you notice that there is less and less water. You see the stale lines where the old water was, and as you stare at those high-water marks every day, the lines become more prominent than the water itself. All you can see is the depletion of your inner happiness, your core, your soul.

By the time people like this seek me out, they have lost their bearings. They often do not even know what their real problem is, just that they no longer feel right. My hope for these people is always the same—that they find me before they destroy their current lives, their families, their relationships. So many of them say the same thing: “Jackie, I don't know who I am anymore. My thoughts and wants are scattered.” So I sit them down, and we begin. The key to contentment is finding the door you never knew existed. You may have to go back to move forward. You will need to enhance your senses and truly see for the first time. In doing so, chances are you'll shed years of sorrow that you never even knew you carried.

I begin by making my clients comfortable, just chatting. They're often unaware that what I am looking for is the children they once were—not in this present lifetime but in their past lives. People tend to get stuck at the age that significant past events took place. For example, if someone died in childbirth in a former life, that person will now likely fear the idea of becoming a mother and associate it with heartbreak, yet long for it at the same time. Or take a man who suddenly begins to avoid his family and job. He blames everything he can think of for this behavior, because he does not know the truth—that he died at that exact age in a previous life, and he has no idea what to do with the rest of his current one.

And so I take them back to the time when they were most happy and carefree, typically between the ages of eight and twelve, when they were still innocent. I always set my exercises in a lovely place, abundant with natural beauty. Wildflowers are waist high and sway slowly in the breeze. A magical road runs through it all, and on the other side stands a mystical forest with trees of every shape and size. The sun bounces off every leaf. Tiny animals scurry around to greet them, peeking out from the underbrush to see this child they once were.

The child begins to get shaded in, like a figure being colored with a crayon. First the hair, the face, the eyes . . . Everything is described, including what the child is wearing. And every time I do this exercise, there is a unique choice of clothing that immediately tells me what era we're in. Is the child wearing buttons or zippers or Velcro? Holding a wooden toy or a plastic one?

After we re-create this lost soul they now recognize, I stand before them and take their hands. They are not alone. We walk along the road. To the right is a fabulous garden, drenched in color like a Monet painting. To the left is a fairy-tale land, with tiny people who keep the forest safe, bushes that grow cream puffs, and clouds of mouthwatering cream. Everything makes sense to the child's eyes.

We walk along this road until we reach the top of a hill and see their childhood home in the distance. As we get closer, the dwelling becomes clearer and they describe it to me. There is no pain or hurt, even if it represents horror. All of that has been washed away by this marvelous land. They point and show me the window to their bedroom, the front door, the mailbox that stands just down the road.

The door opens and out comes the adult version of themselves, who has waited anxiously for years to be reunited. They run to each other, and tears run like a river, but in this case, the river runs both ways. I stand back and watch the reunion of a soul. The adult hugs the child, and they grasp each other's hands. This is their safe place now. They talk and walk. They'll remember this healing conversation, and they'll never forget or leave themselves behind again. They'll fix the current wrong and dry the old tears away.

We cannot fix the future without confronting the past. It's never easy, but it is—ultimately—for the best. I have taken thousands down this road throughout my career as a spiritual medium and counselor for the soul. I have uncovered and documented many past lives, helping others to understand.

And now, it was my turn. I knew the picture, because I painted it. And I knew that I needed to go further inside it. But it was so dangerous to do to myself. I knew that I could get stuck in between my current life and my previous one, trapped forever in a no-man's land, if I relived my previous death. I had done this for other people, but that was different. There was always enough distance between my own life and what I was experiencing for them that I stayed safe. But this
was
my own life. And my own death. I could die from the fear of it. But not knowing my own past could kill my future. I kept seeing this Jane in a yellow raincoat. She was trying to tell me something. What was it?

* * *

I remembered waking up in my own childhood bed, on my own eighth birthday, screaming that I had been killed. My parents rushed in, and my dad, the great medicine man, started chanting for my wolf spirit guide to come and protect me. My mom just wiped my face with a cold, wet cloth. Then she pulled back the covers, and I saw the shock on her face. She quickly started to wash my feet, which were covered in blood.

My parents never asked how I got blood on me. They already knew what I was capable of—that leaving this world and interacting with the dead was as natural for me as going outside to play. But this incident I pushed as far away as I possibly could, deep into my mind. I convinced myself that it was not my memory. We all remember things we never did or saw, things from a previous life. The only difference was that my slate had not wiped clean when I returned for this life. Did the same blood my mother washed away that day still run through me?

* * *

Eddie began to call me from prison on a regular basis. Sometimes I would take notes, and sometimes I would record our conversations. When I did that, though, I always told him I was doing it (which I do whenever I record someone, no matter who it is), and he would suddenly get shy and start mumbling his words. His real torrents of talk came when posterity wasn't listening.

He would mutter and he would ramble, and sometimes, he would even answer my questions. One day, I asked him if he knew why his victim had come back. He became very quiet, but the silence over the phone line was thick, like a heavy snow falling. After a moment, a very sure voice that did not sound like him started to speak.

“Because she wants to live again. She wants to be with you. She wants your skin. But now we have a big problem, Jackie. This leaves me in the middle of you both. I'm down a soul . . . I hope you understand my situation. You have this ongoing fight to save the souls—dead or alive . . . We are all soldiers, just on different sides.” He paused slightly. “I don't like her picking up the phone when I call you. I don't speak to my kill. I hunt. I haunt.”

He turned his attention from Patricia to me. “I live in your dreams now. I walk with you; I eat with you; I snuggle in bed with you. Because I can. I can tell you this, Jackie. If Patricia possesses you, it's done—lights out.”

If that possession (which I had been fighting against for months) did succeed, then one of two things could happen, he said. I would die again in that park on a steamy summer night. Or—and this was the big, directly-on-target fear of mine, and that bastard knew it—I would end up in an asylum. I had always worried about that, considering that some people think it's crazy to talk to the dead. But if I
became
the dead? If I was fully possessed? I'd get locked away for sure, and that terrified me.

“I can see the flashing lights as the juice gets turned up on that electrical shock therapy machine,” he taunted. “Don't think they still don't zap. Then you get to shuffle around all medicated up. Not a pretty picture . . . Just think, I can visit you every day, and no one will believe you. Sure, you'll run around telling anyone that will listen. That's when the real fun begins. Zap, zap, zap.” His words shot through my head like bolts of pain. “I was thinking, if she can come back and live in you, take over your mind and body—well, so can I. So can I.”

But he knew that I would continue to fight. And that pissed him off.

“Pure evil will always know you, Jackie, because you not only know it exists, but you keep trying to save yourself. They know you can see them. You're a fucking roadblock. You're not a priest. Most of them fear the devil, but are not trained. Give me a break! They devote their life to God and can't stand up to his brother!”

He kept at it, his voice the same steady, certain tone.

“I told you what I never told anyone, not even those priests that came to see me. Something powerful ran through my blood, gave me knowledge, showed me how to become the most feared. I felt the transformation. I knew just what spells to perform. I had the book.”

I knew what he was talking about. It was the
Solomon Book of Spells
, an ancient volume of the black arts that he had used. One of the spells he cast was a blinding spell, which let him walk throughout the city without anyone seeing his real face. He could walk into a room and not be noticed.
That would explain why the descriptions his victims gave the police were of a black man
, I thought.

“The door opened and I became the NYC real nightmare. I did my job so well . . . You have the truth. So many of us ‘most evil' have found that book. I don't even know where it came from. Everything was falling into place. I was given a name—the Zodiac. Runs chills through you. Yeah, it does. Copycat, my ass. Why not—recycling a name? He was never caught, no face to the work. So why not show up in New York City? We are everywhere.”

“Where's that book, Eddie?” I asked.

“Oh, Jackie, it disappears for the next in line.”

“Eddie, I think you hid it right before you got caught. That was the plan the devil had. To use you. Then hide the book of spells, let someone else find it and pick up where you left off,” I said. “But, Eddie, if I find it first . . .”

“He will never let you find that! You dare test the devil at his own game? You'll wind up just like your mother.”

The devil made sure he accomplished many of his deeds, Eddie said. But then, I asked, why did he want Patricia back? He already killed her. Wasn't that enough?

“You interfered! Giving shelter to the dead, showing them the way home.” His voice rose in anger. “Now he brought me back. You are not authorized to fight me! How dare you, Jackie, go against God. God lets the devil have his way, so people are forced to believe in him! Get on your knees, Jackie.”

He was yelling now. I knew he was pushing my every button, trying to get me to come to his side. Finding the weak cracks is the sly work of Lucifer. I bowed my head, even though he couldn't see me, and a prayer went through my brain.
For I am weak, Lord. Stand by me, the power and the goodness. I ask only for strength.

Eddie went quiet, as though I had spoken the words, which I had not. “Are you done, Jackie?”

I was not done, not by a long shot, and someday, he would know it.

* * *

I repeated that prayer all the time now. Patricia, although not a demon, was definitely making my life a living hell. As we entered our second year together, I would forget birthdays and anniversaries. I couldn't remember how to use modern electronics that hadn't been around when she was alive—my big television remote, my computer. I maxed out credit cards and kept not paying the mortgage. I shut off the power because Patricia thought it would be fun to just use candles. I went to my safe-deposit box at the bank, and next to the expensive jewelry I had collected during my world travels, I found plastic rings out of a toy vending machine and other silly trinkets. So much for that being a secure place to put things.

I did things I would never, ever do—that went against everything I believed. I jumped turnstiles. I shoplifted. I drank alcohol. I went to dangerous neighborhoods and hung out with dangerous people. Joanne was so worried about my erratic behavior that she put all of my medical records and my name and address in my cell phone, so if something happened to me, it would be easier for the authorities to figure out who I was. Sometimes I had to pull up the address myself to find my way home.