Poltergeeks (12 page)

  "It says here that a poet named Samuel Butler was the author of a satirical poem on Puritanism entitled 'Hudibras' and… Holy cow!"

  "What is it, Julie?" asked Betty.

  I pointed to the flickering computer screen. "It's the same text I saw on the bathroom mirror yesterday and on the YouTube profile."

  Betty squinted over to read the webpage and her faced turned white. "The passage is a commentary on the activities of
Matthew Hopkins.
I knew I recognized that woodcut print on Hudibras' profile, but it can't be!"

  "What can't be?" I asked in a half-panicked voice. "Who the hell is Matthew Hopkins?"

  She straightened her back and her eyes narrowed. "A troublesome character," she said. "A self-appointed persecutor not only of witches, but thousands of innocent women he accused of witchcraft during the seventeenth century. He took his position so very seriously that he named himself the Witchfinder General of England and he swept the entire nation into a frenzy of fear and loathing toward witches and those accused of witchcraft."

  I tried to remember everything I'd been taught about the persecution of witches, and it made my skin crawl. Everyone's heard of the mass hysteria that led to the Salem Witch Trials or that Joan of Arc was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, but our modern world has closed its eyes to a tainted past where those of my kind were hunted and killed just for being who they were born to be. I didn't know anything about Matthew Hopkins and I wasn't entirely sure where Betty was going with this. The guy had been dead for over four hundred and fifty years, so what was his connection to a person named Hudibras and what did either of them have to do with poltergeist activity or the attack on my mother? I decided to press Betty for answers.

  "Just how old are you, Betty?" I asked.

  She seemed surprised by my question and eyeballed me for a moment. "Why do you ask?" I twirled around in my chair to face her. "Well, Mom didn't exactly school me on spirit guardians, but you seem to know a lot about Matthew Hopkins. Were you around back then?"

  "Age doesn't apply to those of my kind," she said. "You might say that I've been around as long as time itself and I've witnessed humanity's evolution from primordial slime to your current incarnation."

  "So what precisely
are
you?" I asked in a confused voice. "I know that my mother summoned you to be my guardian but that doesn't give me much to work with. You've occupied a dying woman's body, and oh, by the way, I'm sure her family has probably filed a missing person report with the police."

  "Piff-paff," she interrupted. "If this body becomes a problem I can always find another. Mortals are dying in hospitals all over the city."

  "Okay that's just plain creepy," I said, surprised at her inference that human bodies were on the same level as disposable coffee cups. "Seriously, what are you, Betty?"

  "Fine," Betty grumbled. "I'm an immortal soul; an amalgam of a variety of naturally occurring spiritual energy that exists in animals, plant life, the wind… You know what I mean. I've been here since the beginning and I will be here long after your bones have turned to dust."

  "Gotcha. And the whole Jedi mind trick thing you pulled on that social worker not to mention what you did after you clicked on the message from Hudibras. Your power is probably off the scale."

  She nodded slowly. "Oh, there are others who are far more powerful than me. As for the social worker, well, I didn't perform a magical act; I simply imparted some of my essence to that nasty woman's mind to get a desired result."

  I nodded as I slid the map of Calgary out from under my laptop. "Marcus and I used a
pendulata
spell to locate where this Hudibras person possibly lives. You can see the drops landed in a section of town called the Beltline."

  Betty hunched over and examined the map. She ran her finger from one drop to the next and said, "You know enough to connect those drops of ink, right?"

  I gave her a sheepish look and I could feel my face turning beet red. "I didn't think of that," I said quietly. "Marcus and I were planning on going down to the Beltline yesterday after school and I'd intended to let my natural sensitivity to magical energy lead me to this guy. That was before I knew he'd attacked Mom, though."

  Betty snorted. "Good thing you didn't because he would have undoubtedly detected your magical signature and it would be you lying in the hospital right now."

  "I know that now," I said, as I reached for a pencil and started drawing a thin line from one dot to the next. When I finished, the lines formed a familiar shape to anyone who knows anything about arcane symbols. The kind of familiar shape that sends a jolt of cold fear straight into the pit of your stomach and makes you want to, I don't know, how about hide under a church pew for a few decades?

  "The Baphomet Sigil," Betty whispered, as she put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

  I nodded slowly as the cold fear in my stomach transformed into full-fledged panic.

  "The Left Hand Path," I said with a shudder.

  Oh yeah. Way over my head.

 
 

 
 
 

We went to the hospital to check in on Mom and upon our arrival Betty made a beeline to the cafeteria. Apparently even spirits needed sustenance. Food was the last thing on my mind so I wandered up to the intensive care ward and within minutes I was standing in front of Mom's hospital bed. The inhuman sounding hiss of the ventilator along with the high-pitched beep from the heart monitor filled my ears as I took her hand. Gone was the tingling sensation of Mom's magical signature intermingling with mine; that supernatural bond that all practitioners share had been stripped away leaving only a hollow shell that looked like my mother.

  But it wasn't her.

  No scowl or smile formed on her face. Her eyes were taped shut and a plastic tube attached to a mouthpiece was fixed between her lips. I watched her chest rise and fall with each gust of oxygen as the crushing weight of guilt pressed down on me.

  I had caused this.

  I should have done as she'd instructed and simply waited for her to arrive but I just had to take matters into my own hands. Now Mom was paying for my mistake.

  I would have done anything to see that familiar look of disapproval in her eyes or to be on the receiving end of a blast of shit because I hadn't listened for like the jillionth time. That's what was supposed to happen when I screwed up; Mom would rip at me with a sharp comment or criticism and we'd have an argument until one of us stormed off.

  But not this time.

  I gently placed a hand on Mom's cheek and whispered a word of magic stupidly thinking that my magic could somehow kickstart her brain, but nothing happened.

  Not a thing.

  It was shortly before 1pm when Marla Lavik walked into the hospital room and to her credit, she didn't turn it into a dramatic affair.

  Yeah, right.

  "I didn't know if I should come," said Marla. She placed a black lace covered hand on my shoulder. "And when I got here the staff gave me a hard time because they didn't want me to scare the patients. Assholes! How is she doing?"

  "No change," I said quietly as I squeezed my mother's hand. "You know, she drives me nuts every day and yet I can't imagine my life without her. Now she's probably going to die and–"

  Marla put her arms around me and I buried my face in her shoulder. "Don't say that, Julie!" she said firmly. "You just have to believe she's going to get through this. The doctors will figure it out."

  I sniffed loudly. "I keep hoping that you're right but the looks on the faces of the nurses tell me a different story."

  "I know," Marla replied. "But you just have to hold on, okay? She'd want you to keep hoping, Jules."

  I nodded and let out another sniff. I pulled away from Marla and I ran my sleeve across my tear filled eyes. "The doctor said there's no reason that Mom should be in a coma. There's no head trauma, no lack of oxygen to her brain… Nothing."

  "Maybe for them it's as impossible to figure out as trying to find a rational explanation for happened at school yesterday, Jules. And what the hell was your mom doing inside the girls' washroom anyway?"

  I glanced at Marla through the corner of my eye. I couldn't tell her that it was Mom who told me to get everyone out of the school because it was under a magical attack and that her soul had been ripped out of her body, so I decided to lie. It's not exactly like I had a choice in the matter.

  "She was coming to get me because I texted her," I said being careful to observe Marla's reaction. "What's everyone saying about all the lockers and stuff?"

  Marla shrugged. "That it was a small earthquake – a tremor. But I'm calling bullshit on that story because the science club posted to their Facebook page something about there being no data from the Faculty of Geology at the university to prove there was an earthquake. All I know is what I saw in that bathroom was real. It was a ghost, Jules. I never believed in ghosts until yesterday."

  "I know," I said in a hollow voice. "Thanks for coming, Marla."

  She adjusted her latex corset with a sharp tug and then walked over to the other side of the hospital bed. I shifted my gaze back to my mother, not wanting to really talk while at the same time hoping that Marla wouldn't leave. I appreciated the company and anything is better than hanging out with a spiritual babysitter that's occupying a dying person's body. We'd said nothing to each other for a few minutes when Marla decided to break the silence.

  And I really wished she hadn't.

  "So, Jules," she said carefully. "About that text last night."

  I blinked. "What about it?"

  She avoided my gaze and shrugged. "Well, all that stuff I said about Marcus. I mean, this is probably the wrong time to be talking about boys."

  "You're right, it is the wrong time," I said coolly.

  Marla nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess so. I wasn't thinking about you or what you must be going through. I was being self-centered again. I'm a rubbish friend."

  I folded my arms across my chest and raised an eyebrow. "Please don't tell me that you're looking for consolation, Marla. I don't have it in me right now and your timing blows, by the way."

  "Because I said that I liked Marcus?"

  I flashed a fiery glare. "No, because you're talking about boy stuff when I'm holding a bedside vigil for my dying mother!"

  She motioned for me to calm down. "Okay, Jules. I get it. Just chill."

  "Fine," I snapped. "Listen, Marla, I'd just like to be alone for a while, okay?"

  I could have sworn that I saw a flicker of anger in Marla's eyes as she circled the bed. She opened her arms to give me another hug but I raised a hand and shook my head.

  "I'm sorry about your mom, Jules," she said quietly. "Text me okay?"

  "Yeah, I'll text you, Marla. Later."

 

I had little to say to Betty after Marla left, partly because I still wasn't sure about my feelings for Marcus, but mostly because I simply didn't like the idea of another girl pursuing him. I didn't want to talk about my feelings because I didn't even know what my feelings were. This was compounded by the fact that I felt like a total ass for even thinking about romance when my mother was at death's door.

  Like, how the hell are you supposed to deal with this kind of stuff? What's the right way to feel? Under normal circumstances, I'd be able to talk my feelings out with Mom, but that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. And there was no way on earth I'd be opening up to Betty. I needed to focus, so I pushed my encounter with Marla out of my head as Betty and I left the hospital. It was blisteringly hot outside, so I threw on my sunglasses as we walked down the shalecovered path toward Fourteenth Street.

  Betty blew her nose and stuffed the Kleenex under her sleeve. "You've said nothing to me since we got to the hospital, Julie. Is everything alright?"

  "What do you think?" I said icily.

  Just then, my phone buzzed in my purse so I flipped it open. It was a text from Marcus and I was in a bitchy mood.

  Great.

  HawkingFan: Hi. I'm just getting on the C-Train. R U Okay?

  Jules: Yes.

  HawkingFan: R U at home? I can come over.

  Jules: No.

  HawkingFan: ??

  Jules: What?

  HawkingFan: Nothing. I was just wondering if you were going to use sentences instead of one word answers at some point in this discussion.

  Jules: Whatever.

  HawkingFan: Where R U?

  Jules: Train.

  HawkingFan: Okay R U mad at me because I'd like to know what I did wrong given that I've been at school all day. I'm selfish that way.

  Oh man. I
was
mad at Marcus. I scrolled up to reread what I'd written when I realized that I'd gone from bitch to just plain evil in fewer than a hundred characters on the screen. But why was I angry at him? He hadn't done anything wrong. Christ, all he was doing was checking in on me because he was worried and I was treating him like a sack of shit. Once again, I whacked myself in the forehead with my cell phone. Just because I wasn't sure about my feelings for Marcus and that I wasn't crazy about his being on Marla's love radar was no reason for me to be a bitch. I thumbed the keypad quickly.

  Jules: Look, I'm sorry okay?

  HawkingFan: I know. I'm sorry for snapping at you.

  Jules: No. I was a bitch. I deserved that.

  HawkingFan: So what's the next move?

  Jules: Not sure. Will be at Southland Mall Station at 3. Can u meet me there?

  HawkingFan: Yep. TTYL

  Jules: TTYL Marcus. Thx.