Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (21 page)

But I believe that I had come to some
understanding, at this point in the case, that the whole thing had
been cockeyed from the beginning...otherworldly...out of context
with the common reality. There was a matrix, an interface, problem.
As though, say, a spider in his web suddenly became self-conscious
and aware of the larger world in which his web is set, aware of me
and all my activities in this larger world. For me, the act of
movement from my home in Malibu to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
in Los Angeles is a routine event; to the spider in his web in the
corner of my living room, my routine event is a mind-blowing
spectacle attended by unimaginable magic and godlike powers. I have
moved farther in a few minutes than the spider will move in a
thousand lifetimes, faster and with less expenditure of my own
energy than the spider could possibly conceive of, and for a
purpose the spider could never understand. He would be reluctant to
tell his spider friends of his discovery; they would think him
crazy.

The same as some of you
may think me crazy when I tell you that the only
phenomena
suggested so
far in these pages are phenomenal only because they are
outside
our
common experience. The whole thing could be entirely routine
and "common" in the world that exists beyond our sense experience.
"Death" to us could be "birth" somewhere else, and vice versa; the
impossible could be the ordinary; the bizarre could be the
commonplace. Why not? You tell me why not. Like the Indian fakir
with the nails in his head. Something either is or is not. If
it
is
, then what
the hell—we may as well concede the point and start looking for
answers. Which is why, I believe, fakirs do these
things.

That is about where I was
on that Friday afternoon as I returned to my beach pad at Malibu.
The Pacific was endlessly royal blue and inviting, the sky above
surpassingly endless and just a shade less blue with puffy little
clouds scudding onshore. Standing there between the two vistas on
infinity, I felt very strongly the limitations of my mortality and
the apparent insignificance of my place in the universe. Yet I felt
also a tug of satisfaction approaching pride in the realization
that, for all the apparent isolation and microscopic stature of
mankind on the cosmic scale, we do appear to have powers and
perceptions far beyond anything we should logically expect. I felt
a comfort, too, in that realization—a "sensing," if you will—that
the human race has a lot more going for it than any of us might
think. We are insects, sure, on that larger scale, but we are much
larger than the sum of our parts. I believe that we must be highly
important insects.

Did others,
though—other
races
—share that view of us?

Or were we merely amusing diversions along
some larger trail of cosmic evolution?

Did Oom-ray-key-too look at me in that same
discomfiting sense that I lock gazes with an old ape at the zoo?
If so, can I fathom her, and the things that move her, any better
than the ape understands me and my world?

Were the soul-walkers visitors to this
planetary zoo?

If so, could I expect them to toss peanuts
or brickbats?

If soul-walkers indeed,
then why the sex games? Is there no sex possible in their common
reality? If so, are they then "outlaws" indulging in forbidden
alien pleasures? Or is there, perhaps, some sober necessity to
their games?

These were thoughts, just thoughts, as I
stood there at the edges of infinity. I share them with you here so
that you may understand my state of mind. It is important that you
understand this. Because Jane Doe again awaited me just inside my
door.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Saints
Come Marching

This time she wore white
buckskin in the fashion of Oom-ray-key-too. But this was Jane,
definitely Jane. Though there was a basic similarity, the finer
nuances of personality clearly delineated one from the other, and
these were more obvious now. I knew it was Jane, and yet I knew
also that it was a Jane somehow different, better integrated, more
into herself. She embraced me formally, rather stiffly, kissed me
lightly upon the lips, drew back to sweep me with those magnificent
eyes, softly enunciated, "Ash-ton."

What the hell...this was no monster.

I felt the initial tension of that
confrontation with "the living dead" oozing out of me. In its place
I knew curiosity and compassion, more an anxiety for her than for
myself, genuine concern.

She'd spoken my name for
the first time. Taking this into consideration with the other
obvious changes noted, I was instantly curious about this. I told
her, "You seem much improved, Jane."

She smiled, shook her head, touched her
breast with both hands, uttered a single word:
"May-un-chee-tee."

The stress was on the third syllable. I
repeated it, sort of like in the me-Tarzan, you-Jane routine, but
of course, she would never be "Jane" again. She had some power of
speech now, however limited, and it was geared to an intellect that
knew itself. This was a whole person, a very lovely whole person,
and I frankly did not give a damn where she came from or what her
game was. I was not afraid of her. Still a bit awed, sure, but
otherwise entirely comfortable.

I again told her, "You seem much
improved."

She obviously understood me perfectly,
smiling and assuming an exaggerated pose, somewhat as a dancer
frozen in place, then she performed a little pirouette as she
replied, "Much improved, yes."

Her voice had that same curious quality as
Oom's—a breathiness usually associated with sensuality or sexiness,
very pleasing but also very suggestive. The enunciation was
similar, too, not in the sense of an accent but in a total lack of
such; almost as though consciously phoneme-constructed with machine
precision. Whatever accent came through was in the modulation
itself, the sensual breathiness.

She cocked her head and angled it downward,
as though to display the crown, as she told me, "All healed.
A-Okay."

I smiled at the space-age jargon but
inspected that skull carefully through the short hair. A-Okay was
an understatement. I could detect no evidence of medical
reconstruction there, no scars or seams, and my probing fingers
could find no irregularity whatever. Curiosity had replaced awe
when I asked her, "How did you do that?"

She replied, "It is the way," then became
very sober and asked me, "Where is James Cochran?"

I considered the question for a moment,
decided to be up front, told her, "Jim is dead."

She blinked the eyes but otherwise revealed
no emotion as she inquired, "How is he dead?"

I said, "He was shot. With a gun.
Murdered."

She did not ponder that but immediately
asked, "Who did this?"

I replied, "I don't know that yet,
Jane."

She corrected me:
"May-un-chee-tee," almost inaudibly, eyes cast down. She was
withdrawing. I could feel it, though it was purely feeling; I
cannot explain how I knew that. I just knew that I somehow had to
command her attention, keep her "fixed" in my space-time matrix. I
hurried to add, "Vicky is okay; she's in good hands; she's
fine."

May-un's eyes came back to
mine with a solemn smile. She softly intoned, "Vick-toe-ree-uh,"
and she immediately winked out. I cannot otherwise describe her
disappearance. She merely winked out, ceased to be in that time and
place. But for a moment, a quick pulse of a moment, I thought I
perceived something standing in her place, something not really
substantial—that is, nonphysical—but still there, like the
vanishing image withdrawing from a TV screen when you turn the set
off—collapsing, that is, to a tiny point before disappearing.
Within that tiny point I thought I saw the woman I had seen at
Ojai, Jane Doe senior.

It was very disconcerting.

I stood there motionless
for perhaps a minute, then moved myself onto the spot where May-un
had stood. I am not at all sheepish to admit that I moved rather
gingerly onto that spot. The human intellect, after all, is not
conditioned to magic. That which is not understood within the
common reality is instinctively viewed with distrust and even fear.
I muttered to myself, "Beam me up, Scotty," seeking refuge in
humor, I guess, as the better alternative to dread—but the choice
of words was probably more a reflection of an attempt by the
intellect to decode the inexplicable. In our cause-and-effect
universe, a three-dimensional object does not simply "wink out."
Not, that is, within the everyday experience of human beings. And I
simply had to think of May-un as a human being. She met all the
criteria. She had mass, warmth, and consciousness—even
self-consciousness.

In trying to deal with
such phenomena, the mind whirls through all the possible
explanations, trying to fit the event to an explicable pattern. The
only possible explanations my mind could seize upon were the
science-fiction special effects in movies and television ("Beam me
up, Scotty," from
Star
Trek
) and the so-called bilocation and
apportation beliefs of the mystics. Since I am conditioned more
toward science than spiritualistic magic, I was reaching
instinctively toward a scientific rationalization, even if that
involved science fiction instead.

But I also had to consider
the other. Many mystics—St. Paul among them—reported on bilocation,
the ability to exist physically in two places at the same time, and
apportation (or teleportation), the ability to move physically
from one place to another instantly. And I was probably thinking
“teleportation" while mouthing science fiction as the explanation,
for the two are really the same phenomenon explained in different
terms. The mystics believe that a body can dematerialize and
instantly rematerialize in a distant location. They do not explain
how this happens. The writers of
Star
Trek
conceived a high-tech process by
which a body is converted to sheer energy and beamed as energy from
one point to another where it is again converted to matter without
damage. One is about as far-out as the other. Take your pick. Don't
blame me if the pick in either direction is unsatisfactory. It is
all I could come up with.

You could try a scenario using a
science-fiction explanation by which May-un has been dazzling me
with her special effects. Say, for example, that she is really a
member of the crew of a mother ship in earth orbit. She gets a
six-hour liberty, beams down to frolic with Earthlings, then beams
back up for her next tour of duty. Umpty-million people bought that
sort of thing on a week-by-week basis for years, and loved it.
Commander Kirk and his starship crew have entered the common
folklore of the planet and have probably already influenced a new
generation of young scientists who will be disappointed with
themselves until they can convert sci fi to science itself.

But I did not like the starship scenario, so
what I was really left with was an apparently alien people who
somehow identified themselves as Earthlings or as soul-walking
visitors who predate some of our Western mountains and seem to have
some sort of an edge on immortality, as we humans think of that.
With May-un as my example, they seemed to have the ability to come
and go at will, to commune and interact with the people of our
common reality but yet bend our conception of natural law including
the ability to heal their own wounds and even to "rise from the
dead." May-un told me, "It is the way." But they did not seem to be
omniscient. May-un had to ask about Jim Cochran.

So much for scenarios.

Let's consider religion. In II Corinthians:
12, St. Paul writes:

"I know a man in Christ
who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in
the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know
that this man was caught up into Paradise—whether in the body or
out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that
cannot be told, which man may not utter.”

He was referring to himself, I believe, and
those things "which man may not utter" are the things that
transformed the lives of all the saints. Please note also Paul's
reference to "the third heaven." How many "heavens" are there?
Could those "things" that may not be uttered have to do with the
true reality, the one not normally available to man on Earth?

I will not presume to answer that. Perhaps,
though, you should try a scenario of your own. Do so, please, then
hurry back for the next movement of this tale. Because I want to
tell you about a voice from the dead, a message from Jim Cochran,
which I found on my telephone answering machine and involved both
the living and the dead... and little Vicky Vick-toe-ree-uh...and,
maybe, both you and me.

Chapter Thirty:
Message

My answering machine accepts messages up to
five minutes long. It also automatically records the date and time
of each message, so I get a pretty good record of calls. I had not
been home since the morning after this case began for me. So I had
about a two-day collection, which normally would mean four to six
calls. The machine's memory was showing ten calls recorded,
something of a record for me, so I figured I'd better check them
out.

Jim's message was fifth in
the lineup, following two insurance salesmen, an aluminum siding
salesman, and a wrong number. The memory chip showed the message
was received at five minutes past two on Wednesday afternoon, which
would have been some eight hours or so before Jim's death, while
Alison and I were shaking the morgue for a missing
corpse.