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A Prophecy of Shadows

Chapter 12

With the keys and directions Janet had provided them, they soon were pulling up to a modest tract home on Della Lane. A small house with a decent sized yard, nothing about it stood out to say that a ‘soiled dove’ lived there. Getting out of the jeep, they hadn’t gotten more than halfway up the sidewalk when a voice sidetracked them.

"Can I help you?" A young woman, not more than 25, was standing in the side yard between Callie’s house and the adjoining one, a pair of clippers in hand.

Jessie double-checked the numbers on the house. "This is Calandra Jones’ house?"

The young woman eyed her suspiciously, nodding. "And you would be?"

They walked over to her. "I’m Jessie Watson, and this is Cam Mitchell. We’re…acquaintances of Calandra’s."

Wiping her hand on her jeans, she held it out to Jessie. "I’m Lori Hunter. I live next door."

"You a friend of Callie’s?" Cam asked as he shook her hand.

Lori shifted slightly. "I wouldn’t exactly say that."

Jessie glanced at Cam. "I know you don’t know us from Adam, Ms. Hunter, but is there anything you can tell us about Calandra?"

Looking at her watch, she replied, "Well, it being a Friday afternoon, Calandra should be showing up sometime soon."

Cam gave Jessie a subtle nod. "Calandra’s probably going to be away for a while. Something went down, and that’s why we’re trying to get more information about her."

Lori was quick enough to pick up on the fact that they were there in more of an official capacity, rather than friends. "That doesn’t really surprise me. Callie was always rubbing people the wrong way at one time or another." Something seemed to distract Lori, and she pulled a monitor receiver from her waistband. "Would you like to come on over for a few minutes? My son is waking up from his nap."

Lori’s house was a mixture of country comfort and toddler rampage, with toys scattered about. Cam and Jessie sat down on the sofa while Lori went and tended to her son. A warm bottle and a transfer to the baby swing had him settled comfortably.

When Lori was done, Jessie started right in. "How long have you known Calandra?"

Lori sat down in the rocker adjacent to the sofa. "I guess about a year, a year and a half; she was living next door when we moved in."

Jessie leaned forward, her forearms on her legs. "You said you weren’t friends; did you have trouble with her from the beginning?"

"Oh no. In fact, at first she was as nice as could be."

Cam frowned. "What happened?"

"She went psycho, that’s what happened." Seeing their expressions, she shook her head. "After my husband and I moved in, I put in a greenhouse as well as a garden. I had decided to start my own business, selling organically grown herbs and seeds online."

Cam and Jessie exchanged a look—they now knew where Casey’s herb reference came into play.

"Callie and I had been talking off and on, having coffee together, and when I told her what I was going to do, she was insistent on putting together a web site for me. At the time, I knew nothing about how to do it, so I agreed. When I tried to pay her for it, she wouldn’t hear of it, saying she wanted to help a friend." Lori got up and walked over to a console table, taking a business card from the small drawer, which she then handed to Jessie. "Time went on, and surprisingly the business took off. I kept it strictly money orders or an online cash banking site, even though Callie wanted to expand it to where I would process credit cards. I just wanted to keep it simple, you know? She seemed a little miffed, but dropped it." Lori sighed. "After a while, I’d have updates and stuff I needed to put up, but it would be a while before Callie could get around to it. I didn’t want to be an imposition—I kept offering to pay her for her time, but she kept turning me down, saying she was happy to do it for me. Finally, it got to the point that the quality of the site was suffering. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought some books, "Web Design for Dummies" and "Learning Web Design", and taught myself the basics. I was getting ready to introduce a whole new line of herbs, and wanted to do an overhaul of the site design. I told Callie what I was planning on adding, and since it was going to be time intensive, I was going to do the site on my own. She was very encouraging at first, offering tips and suggestions. Which was fine, until I started not taking her advice as gospel."

Jessie picked up on the subtle signs of stress coming from Lori. "Is that when things started going bad?"

Lori shrugged. "Actually, it was before that, but at the time I didn’t know. I mean, besides trying to pay her, anytime she did something for me I always thanked her. And, I also supplied her with any herbs she needed for her rituals."

Cam’s head came up. "Rituals?"

Lori nodded. "I’ll get to that in a minute. The name of my business is Lori’s Organic Herbs, and in a lot of my correspondence I would refer to it as LOH. One day I was doing a Google search and for the heck of it typed in LOH. Not much came up, but then I saw under the tabs at the top you could change the search from ‘web’ to ‘blogs’. There were quite a few entries from different people in their blogs where LOH was an actual reference to my company, mainly from customers who were recommending me to others. I was thrilled. Well, at least until I ran across one particular site."

"A blog?"

She nodded. "At first, what I was reading didn’t sink in. If it hadn’t mentioned LOH and herbs specifically, I probably would have skipped it. The entry totally trashed me, my site, my company, everything. Hateful, venomous stuff. I didn’t recognize the nickname on the blog, but it was a public entry—I couldn’t have gotten to it otherwise. So, I bookmarked the site. I was going to ask Callie about how to keep track of a blog, since she had one on a social networking site, but I was so embarrassed about what was being said, I decided not to mention it. The blog entries kept coming, and then a few weeks later I noticed something."

"What?" Jessie asked.

"The hateful blog, as I called it, the person put in an entry talking about something that had happened to them that day. Two hours later, Callie said the exact same thing in her blog. That’s when I knew it was her."

"Geez."

"The thing was, to my face she was acting like we were best friends, telling me how happy she was for me and how great a job I had done with the site, but at the exact same time she was saying the most hateful, spiteful things imaginable in that blog. At first, I didn’t say anything. I contacted a couple of mutual friends and asked them if Callie had said anything to them about being upset with me, and they said no. I asked Callie if everything was all right, if there was anything she wanted to talk about. ‘Oh no, everything’s fine’. I almost felt like I was losing my mind, it was such a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde byplay! The third time I asked one particular friend about it, all she would say to me was do a search for pomba sujada, but only if I really wanted to know."

Cam looked over at Jessie. "Pomba sujada?"

Jessie shook her head. "It’s Portuguese. Rough translation would be soiled dove."

"Really?" Lori said. "I always wondered about that. It was a nickname Callie used online sometimes. Anyway, first I did an Internet search, but it didn’t turn up much. Then I used the blog search. It pulled up an old entry where the writer referred to herself as pomba sujada, and it was the same blog as the one I had been following."

"You didn’t go and pull up the old entries when you first found that blog?" Jessie asked.

"I never said I was Internet savvy. I was originally so shocked by what I had found, it didn’t even cross my mind to do that. I mean, I was thinking this person was a stranger, and then to find out it was someone I thought was my best friend…" The hurt was evident in her voice.

Jessie was still trying to put the pieces together. "She put these things in as searchable terms?"

"Oh no. The search engine I was using, it would search the actual text of public blog entries. Apparently not all search engines function that way."

"So if you hadn’t done a search for LOH, you probably would have never run across it."

"No. She never mentioned me directly by name, but the LOH was the thing that gave it away. I guess fate works in mysterious ways." Lori shrugged. "After that, I just pulled back. She was accusing me of all sorts of stuff, and it was ‘out there’ enough for me to realize she was delusional. The one friend who told me to search for pomba sujada, Sarah, she was kind of caught in the middle."

"How so?"

"Well, Callie had given her a direct link to that blog. And she knew Sarah and I were friends. It was almost as if Callie was trying to draw her in, get her to commiserate with her. Sarah refused to do it. She ignored things for the longest time, but finally told Callie after she had showed her ass so many times and kept prodding to get a reaction, that she didn’t agree with any of the things Callie was saying about me. Pissed Callie off; she thought that Sarah should have gone to her when she read the blog and asked her what was wrong. Callie didn’t have the balls to come to me with her perceived problems, but wanted to use Sarah as a conduit for her bullshit. Sarah finally told her exactly where she stood and what she thought of the whole situation. Of course, it wasn’t what Callie wanted to hear, so Callie went on and on about how I stabbed her in the back, that I said all these derogatory things about her. The only problem was, she was accusing me of doing exactly what she had done. She definitely has a talent of turning and putting the blame on someone else, when she was the one who started tossing shit to begin with. It’s never her fault…always someone else’s, even though she instigated the whole thing."

"Why do you think she was posting these things?" Cam asked.

"She was pissed that I had taken over doing my site, for one. But in the same breath, she was pissed because she was doing ‘so much work’ when she was in charge of the site, and said she was used and unappreciated."

"But, you said you offered to pay her, and you thanked her for all the work."

"Yeah, I did, on several occasions."

"Then what the hell did she want?" he asked in exasperation.

"That’s a good question. I figured if she was upset about something I had done, or something she thought I had done, she would have acted like an adult and said something to me about it. If she didn’t want to do it face to face, then send a damned email! Apparently she was too busy playing the victim to be bothered with that. But you know what the kicker is? When I started doing the site on my own, I realized how easy it is. It didn’t take hardly any time at all to create the pages or do the updates."

"You mentioned something about her doing rituals?" Jessie asked.

Lori nodded. "She’s supposedly Wiccan or Pagan or something like that. Hey, to each his own, you know? But, from my understanding, it’s supposed to be something like a ‘white’ witch, meaning you do rituals for good, for blessings, things like that. Their version of the golden rule is, ‘An it harm none, do what ye will’. The things she talked about, though, and the things I saw, I really don’t think she was practicing ‘white’ magic. It seemed more like she was embracing dark energy." Lori shrugged her shoulders. "I don’t know enough about it to say for sure, but as time went on, she became more negative, more delusional, more…unrecognizable."

"I don’t suppose you saved copies of those blog entries, did you?" Cam asked.

"Actually, I did. They were so completely different than how she was acting to my face, I wanted proof that I hadn’t imagined it."

Jessie glanced at her watch, before pulling out a notepad and jotting down her name and email address. "If you wouldn’t mind, would you forward the copies of that blog to me? It might offer some insight for the doctor who’s treating Calandra."

"So she finally had a major meltdown?"

Jessie bit her lip. "You could say that. I don’t think you’ll be seeing her for a while." Jessie and Cam stood. "You’ve been very helpful; thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us."

"Glad I could help. I’ll get those copies sent to you sometime this evening."

Walking between the two yards, Cam and Jessie climbed the steps to Callie’s front door. "Sounds like Callie’s definitely delusional," Cam said as he held the screen door open for Jessie. Watched as she fit the key into the lock, hearing the audible click as the deadbolt disengaged. Wasn’t prepared for the cold draft that hit them in the face as she opened the heavy wooden door. "Geez, does she have an air conditioner on?"

Jessie ran her hand over the goose bumps on her arm as she stepped into the living room, frowning as she stopped in her tracks. "Well, that’s what I thought, but it isn’t cold in here."

Cam closed the door quietly behind him as he looked around the room. "You’re right. Maybe it was just from the house being closed up for the last few weeks." They briefly explored the downstairs area, which was sparsely furnished. A quick look in the kitchen revealed very little food in the refrigerator, a few canned items in the cupboard—nothing out of the ordinary. "I’m guessing what we’re looking for must be upstairs."

"Has to be; there’s nothing down here," Jessie said as she began to climb the staircase.

The upstairs consisted of two rooms with a bathroom located in between. One obviously served as the main bedroom. The bed was flanked by two matching tables with small reading lamps adorning them, a dresser against one wall, a small bookcase perpendicular to it. Natural curiosity drew Jessie to examine the contents. A few paperback novels and a couple of textbooks on physiotherapy occupied the top shelf. The lower shelf, though, held about a dozen or so books, all about the same size and color. Pulling one out, she flipped through it briefly.

"I wonder if this was what Casey was talking about."

"What is it?" Cam asked.

"It’s a journal. Actually more like twelve or fourteen of them," she replied as she picked up another and scanned the contents. "It looks like she’s kept a diary for years."

"Well, Casey did say ‘books’. Let’s finish looking through the other room, then we can come back for those on our way out."

Sliding the volume back into place, she followed Cam into the next room. A quick look revealed a small desk with a laptop, an armchair by the window, some type of cabinet and a table. Hesitating just inside the doorway, a multitude of scents hit her at once. "What the hell is that smell?"

Cam stopped, focusing for a moment. "Smells like some type of incense." Raising his head slightly, he added, "Something burnt, or scorched."

Jessie’s nose wrinkled. "It smells like burnt hair to me. And stale whiskey." The room definitely didn’t seem to have as much natural light in it as the main bedroom had, even though the number of windows was the same. Pulling back the edge of the curtain, she realized the windowpanes were filthy.

"What do you think she used this for?"

Jessie turned and found Cam standing in front of a long table. Coming to stand beside him, she noted the rough hewn wooden top, splotched with what appeared to be wax. At the back of the table in the center was a statue. Jessie picked it up, moving into the light to see it better. It was heavy, and cold…much colder than the room was. It appeared to be carved from marble, and depicted a warrior holding a long upright spear in one hand, a coiled serpent in the other. "Well, if memory serves me correctly, this is a replica of a statue at the Gaziantep Museum in Turkey. It’s Ares, the Greek god of war."

Cam was studying the stained wood. "Definitely wax on here. Ashes, too."

Setting the statue back down, Jessie walked over to an old apothecary cabinet. Varying candleholders lined the top, along with a crystal bowl and matching cruet that was filled with a greenish yellow liquid. Opening one of the long drawers, she found a braided rope, a quill, a small silver dagger, tapers and matches. The next drawer was filled with small glass containers, the ensuing aromas verifying they were filled with different types of herbs, others having a liquid content. A couple of miniature braziers and several disks of charcoal rounded out the drawer. The third drawer held a brass incense bowl, a variety of incenses, a deck of tarot cards, and a book. The last drawer contained an assortment of candles, all different colors and sizes. Along with a surprise.

"Well, I’ll be damned."

Cam looked over her shoulder. "What is it?"

"My brush!" Jessie exclaimed, before pulling out a T-shirt that had a piece missing. "This isn’t mine."

Taking it from her he said, "No, but it looks like one of mine. I wonder…" He left the room, returning a few seconds later carrying a pillow. "This is mine, too."

Jessie turned back to the cabinet. Reopening the third drawer, Jessie pulled out the book. Going over to the window, she sat down in the armchair, the sunlight highlighting the dull gold lettering on the dark brown leather cover. She traced her fingertips over the letters. The Book of Shadows. Dismissing the shiver as a result of an odd draft in the room, Jessie opened the book and slowly began flipping through the pages. "Cam?"

"Yeah?"

"Bring me one of the journals from the bedroom, please?"

Disappearing into the adjoining room, he soon reappeared with a journal in hand. "What’cha got there?" he asked. She closed the cover so he could see the front. "Book of Shadows? Isn’t that something they had in the TV series, Charmed?"

"I wouldn’t know; I never watched the show. But I do remember reading somewhere that Wiccan and Neopagan traditions sometimes have what’s called a book of shadows, something which contains rituals, religious texts, and other descriptions of their practices."

"You mean witchcraft?" he asked dubiously.

"Some would call it that. Others just call it paying homage to the earthly elements. I guess it all depends on the way you use it."

Looking back at the table, realization dawned. "So you’re telling me, in addition to stalking and being psychotic, that Callie was dabbling in witchcraft, and that’s an altar?"

Jessie shrugged her shoulders. "I can’t say for sure, but it’s certainly starting to look that way. I mean, I don’t know much about it in general, just what I’ve read in relation to historical context. But this," she said as she looked between the journal and the leather-bound book, "is really odd."

"How so?"

"Well, first of all, this Book of Shadows doesn’t contain paper; it’s vellum."

Cam frowned. "Animal skin?"

Jessie nodded. "It dates from Roman times. Scrolls, finer books and manuscripts all used vellum. It’s extremely rare to find a modern book with pages made from vellum, just because of the expense."

"Well, what’s the stuff they have in the office supply stores they call vellum?"

"That’s a paper vellum that’s made from cotton. This," she said as she pointed to the book, "is definitely true vellum."

"So, it’s an old book?"

Jessie bit her lip. "I don’t think so. The pages apparently were blank, because what’s written here matches Callie’s handwriting from her journal." She shook her head. "It’s the ink that’s bugging me."

Cam moved so he could take a closer look at it. "What’s wrong with it?"

Jessie pointed to the writing on the page. "You see how it has a brownish cast to it? That’s reminiscent of ink from the 1700 to 1800’s. Back then it contained ferrous sulfate, and while the writing would originally be black, it would fade to brown over time because of the oxidation. But, given that it’s in Calandra’s handwriting, the oxidation angle doesn’t fit. Even if she used an old recipe for ink, it takes a long time for the oxidation to take place."

"Have Daniel take a look at it when they get back, see what he thinks."

"Maybe you’re right," she said absently.

"You doing okay?"

She managed to give him half a grin. "Yeah, just a little tired, I guess. This place is kind of creepy."

"You can say that again. What sane person would buy into this bullshit?"

"Well, the key word there is sane. I don’t think Callie’s been sane for quite a while."

"More like bat-shit crazy, using Jack’s favorite saying."

Jessie looked around the room, letting out a sigh. Jumped slightly when she felt Cam’s hand on her shoulder.

"Talk to me."

Jessie shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I don’t know," she said softly, her gaze settling on the accouterments surrounding the altar. "It’s just…sad."

"Sad?"

She reached up and covered Cam’s hand with her own. "If what Ginger said is true, that Callie’s own father abused her like that…" Jessie’s voice caught as her throat tightened, and she felt Cam give her a reassuring squeeze. "Being that young, having her innocence destroyed by the one person who was supposed to protect her, she would have never been able to trust anyone."

"We don’t know if what she said was true, or whether it was just another one of Callie’s ploys to garner the sympathy factor."

"I know, but if it is true, that would explain a lot, the way she used people, used drugs, turned tricks. Those are classic signs of that type of abuse."

"Well, I’m sure the psychiatrists will be able to figure it out. Once they’re done with their full assessment, we’ll have a better idea of what was going on."

"I guess you’re right."

"You ready to get out of here?"

Jessie took one last look at the altar, ignoring the chill that enveloped her. "Sure." Gathering up the Book of Shadows and the journal, her gaze came to rest on the laptop. "Just to be on the safe side, let’s take the laptop, too. Sam might be able to find something relevant on it."

Cam went and unplugged the power cord from the outlet, wrapping it around the laptop. Followed Jessie into the bedroom where they gathered up the remainder of the journals. Assuring they had everything they needed, they headed for the stairs, never noticing the slight breeze that stirred the ashes on the altar.

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