A Haunting in Shoreham

A Haunting in Shoreham

This story is a work of fiction based on actual events related to me by a resident of Shoreham, Long Island, New York.

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York.

The hallway reeked of decay, sweat, and fried dust. We stepped gingerly on soft-soled shoes to avoid stepping on the empty crack vials and other litter covering the filthy floor of the tenement. I flattened myself against the wall on the left side of the door where the apartment number faded to an unreadable smudge.

Dennis did the same on the opposite side, 9MM’s held high in two-handed combat stances. The entry team crouched directly in front of the door. Behind them two back-up SWAT members held modified AR-15’s at the ready. Everyone wore full Kevlar and helmets. The adrenaline ran through the roof. Behind that door was Manuel Ortiz, one of Brooklyn’s most violent drug dealer and suspect in half a dozen murders.

I looked at my partner, Dennis Dougherty and nodded. He held his hand up, three fingers out and silently counted down. On zero, the two men on the “log” picked up the iron battering ram and swung it at the door. Lock, bolts and chain flew off as the door splintered and exploded inward. We burst into the room, weapons in combat-stance, screaming "police, get down on the ground."

Each moment unwound in slow motion, one millisecond at a time, every crisp detail imprinting on my mind. A woman holding a child, diving/falling to a corner of the kitchen, empty takeout food containers mixed with drug paraphernalia on the table, the whole place overlaid in decay and squalor. A tall man, Manuel Ortiz, naked from the waist up, thin and covered with prison tattoos, burst from the opposite doorway with a large pistol in his left hand, leveled at me.

I saw the rage in his eyes as I tried to swing my own weapon to bear, and in that moment I knew he would fire first and I would die.

From behind me came the staccato cough of an automatic weapon and the steel jacketed slugs impacted Ortiz in the center of his chest, blowing out gouts of blood and flesh as they exited his back, slamming him into the wall. He slid down, head resting against his ruined chest and stopped in a half crouched loose position only a corpse could assume. I approached, weapon ready, even though Ortiz was obviously dead and his own gun lay five feet away on the floor.

I’ve often thought about the next moment, about how much could have been my own adrenaline-fueled imagination, or that strange ethereal and alien quality permeating these events.

Ortiz lifted his head and opened his eyes. I almost fired from sheer nervous reaction. They say the eyes are the mirror of the soul. But no human soul stared out of those eyes that should have been stone dead. Instead, I felt a malevolence lurking behind the orbs. Ortiz smiled and raised his right hand toward me. He held a small yellow sheet of paper, partly splattered with his own blood. I instinctively took the paper.

“Message from hell, Maricon,” he said as the light vanished from his eyes. His arm fell to the floor and his head lolled against his chest once more.

Half of a detective’s life is spent filling out reports and other paperwork, and that night Dennis and I didn’t get out of the Precinct until nearly ten. We ended the night with a beer at the White Brick Inn, a cop hangout on Flatbush Avenue.

“So what happened there with Ortiz and that paper?” Dennis asked as he took a sip of his beer.

“I don’t know, man. It’s like he came alive for a moment just to give me that message.”

“What’s on it?”

I shook my head and sipped at my own beer. It had been a strange kind of writing, five words filled with characters I’d never seen before.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “I gave it to Bernie. He’s good with codes and languages and knows people at Columbia University, he’ll figure it out.”

“So you want to come out with me for the Memorial Day weekend, stay at Julia’s place?”

Julia was Dennis’ girlfriend. Every once in a while he talked about getting married again. He spent every weekend at her house in Shoreham, Eastern Long Island, a beautiful place just a mile or so from the beach.

“Preciate the offer,” I replied, “I’ll take you up on it. I gotta get out of Brooklyn, see some trees and the ocean.”

“It’s not the ocean, it’s the Long Island Sound.”

“Whatever. Count me in.”

Dennis took another sip of his beer, grabbed a few peanuts from the bowl and looked around. The place was getting pretty full with an entire shift of cops going off duty for the upcoming holiday. He turned back toward me, shifted in his chair and leaned forward.

“Listen Peter, I want to ask you a favor.”

“Hell Dennis we been partners for what, a decade now? You don’t have to ask, just name it.”

“Well it’s about…it’s about Julia. I, we, need some help.”

“You’re not going to ask me about relationship stuff are you? I’ve got my own problems on that end.”

“No, nothing like that. Here’s what I need…”

**

I pulled my car into the trail leading to a wooded area at the beginning of Julia’s block. Fifty feet into the narrow dirt road, there’s a sharp bend and I parked the car right around the curve. From that location it couldn’t be seen by passerby’s. I walked back to the road and sat behind a large bush and waited.

I recognized her from Dennis’ description - tall, with dark hair and slightly hooked nose like a Spanish aristocrat. She parked her Honda just a few feet from where I sat and didn’t look in my direction. She took a few steps and leaned against a tree, just staring toward Julia’s house. It wasn’t long before Julia drove up the block, slowed and looked as she passed the woman, then pulled into her driveway. She didn’t look back, just got out of her car and walked into her house like Dennis had told her to.

The woman looked toward the house, took a couple of steps as if deciding whether to visit or not, turned around and got in her car. She made a U turn down the block and left. I followed her, not worried about losing her since Dennis all ready had her license plate and tracked it. Her name was Donna Alvarez and I knew where she lived.

I didn’t lose her as I followed her to Brentwood, a town about a dozen miles away. She turned on Atlanta Street, a wide cul-de-sac where she lived. A Catholic church, St Mark’s, and the adjoining building that served as rectory and center for church activities occupied the entire left side of the block. Donna Alvarez’s house was one of only two on the block and directly opposite St Mark’s. I parked my car at the curb and rang her front bell. She answered immediately, almost as if she expected me.

“Miss Donna Alvarez?” I asked.

She looked at me with the briefest hint of a smile and said “Yes.”

“My name is Peter Duval, Miss Alvarez. I’m a New York City detective and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Kind of far from Manhattan aren’t you Detective?”

“Yes Ma’am. This is not an official investigation. I believe you’ve all ready had that visit.”

She sighed, opened the door wider and said, “Come in detective.”

“Look, I know what this is about. I mean the woman no harm, in fact, I may be the only one who can help her but she refuses to talk to me. Are you related to her?”

“Her fiancée, Dennis Doughterty, is my partner and closest friend. They’re concerned about your stalking. Why are you doing this?”

“Stalking? Is that what they told you?” She replied, her eyes growing wide as a little flash of anger danced in her dark pupils. “Detective, I will tell you nothing this afternoon, not a thing, but I’ll make a deal with you, and if you truly are a friend of theirs, you’ll take my offer.”
“And what offer would that be Miss Alvarez?”

“Find out about a priest named Father Kilmartin. He was my cousin and a good friend.”

“Was?”

“He died a few weeks ago in an auto accident right after leaving Julia’s house. Find out for yourself about this accident. The Suffolk County Precinct that conducted the investigation is just a few miles from here. They’ll talk to you since you’re a policeman. Find out all you can, then talk to Julia and her fiancée. Have them tell you exactly what happened the night Father Kilmartin died. Have them tell you the truth, then come back and talk to me. I’ll tell you everything I know, then you will understand.”

**

On the way to the 6th Precinct, my cell phone rang. It was Bernie Taub, the investigator I had given Ortiz’ little message to.

“Dude,” Bernie said, “where’d you get that paper?”

“I told you Bernie, Ortiz gave it to me just before he died.”

“Don’t make sense, dude.”

“Yeah, how come?”

“Only about four or five people in the Big Apple know this language and they’re all at Columbia. It’s Aramaic.”

“What the hell is Aramaic?”

“It’s an ancient language, the language of Jesus and the Bible. I don’t think Ortiz and his crew are fluent in that.”

I went through a red light before I realized it. An old man in a Buick flipped me the middle finger while leaning on his horn. I felt as if a hole had opened in front of me, deep and dark, filled with unknown menace. How could Ortiz’ last act in his drug- fueled, psychopathic life, be a short note in ancient languages to a cop?

“Peter? You still there dude?”

“Yeah. What’s it say Bernie?”

“The bitch is mine.”

**

I didn’t have long to wait until Jack Murphy came off patrol. The desk sergeant pointed me out to him and he walked over and introduced himself. He’s tall with reddish hair, dark eyes and a soft voice.

“I’m Jack Murphy,” he said. “I hear you’re NYPD and you got some questions for me?”

“Yes I do. It’s unofficial. You okay with that?”

“Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Two weeks ago you were the investigating officer on a traffic fatality case on William Floyd Parkway, a Father Kilmartin.”

He puffed his cheeks, sighed loudly and sat down. The friendly face turned serious, somber.

“I wondered when someone would come around about that one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it didn’t add up, know what I mean? Did you read the accident report?”

“Yes.”

“So you know. That part of the road is straight, it was a warm and dry evening, just starting to get dark, about seven thirty. He turned off the road onto the grass median doing about eighty. The tire tracks showed constant acceleration. He didn’t waiver, straight line all the way, no braking. Estimated speed when he hit that concrete abutment was over a hundred. He drove right into it, deliberately.”

“The report said he fell asleep.”

“They had to put something down. His blood was clean, no alcohol or traces of any medications or drugs. He was 58 years old in excellent physical condition. His housekeeper at the dioceses said he never went to bed before eleven. So how’d he fall asleep after driving less than five minutes at seven thirty PM?”

“Anyone thought of the obvious: suicide?”

“Yeah, everyone associated with the investigation thought of it. But it wasn’t a conclusion.”

“Why not?”

“First of all he’s a Catholic priest and that’s a big no-no for these guys. And second, I interviewed a half dozen people he was close to, and there’s no evidence of anything suggesting potential suicide. Third, he was a tough old bird, born in Cuba, anti-Castro agitator. He spent four years in one of Fidel’s hellhole prisons before coming over in the eighties with the Mariele boat exodus. No way he’d kill himself like that with no reason or warning. It’s…”

“What?”

“He was coming back from visiting a woman in Shoreham, about four miles from where he was killed.”

“Julia LaRosa?”

Murphy looked at me steady for a moment before asking, “You know her?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I tell you what detective, find out what happened that night at Julia LaRosa’s house. I’ll bet you’ll find out why Father Kilmartin thought it necessary to ram a concrete abutment at one hundred miles or better.”

**

I kicked back in the easy chair with Dennis across from me, firing up a barbecue on his fiancé’s patio in Shoreham. Julia came out of the kitchen with three chilled Coronas, wedge of lime in the necks, Key West style. She smiled and handed me one.

“Nice to have you here Peter,” she said. Julia’s the kind of person who makes you feel good just by being there. Short and cute with an easy smile, she kind of reminds me of Linda Ronstadt in her early days.

She put an arm around Dennis, handed him a Corona and gave him a quick kiss, laced with the familiarity of people comfortable with each other.

The evening passed quickly, country- warm, surrounded by cricket songs, lilac breezes, Dennis’ onion and cheddar burgers, and easy conversations. Still, I sensed something lurking in the background, shadow-quiet, with a presence that would only be ignored for so long. Julia cleared the dishes and went inside for a while, leaving us alone.

“Dennis, you want to tell me what the hell’s going on?” I asked him.

He took a long swig of his beer, sucking down the last dregs as if that would make the issue go away, and fixed his gaze toward the long shadows at the end of Julia’s yard.

“Man Peter, it’s like…I don’t know, can we talk about it tomorrow?”

“Sure, why not? You ask me to follow and talk to a strange woman who’s been stalking Julia for some unknown reason. This woman says she’ll talk to me only after you tell me some mysterious shit you’re holding back, then, she tells me to check out a priest named Father Kilmartin who apparently, deliberately plowed his car into a concrete abutment right after something happened in this very house. Now I’m here, and we’re playing suburban life like nothing’s going on. Don’t bullshit me Dennis, something strange is happening here.”

A siren went off in the distance punctuated by the rumble of an airliner finding its way toward nearby McArthur airport. Dennis turned back toward me, and the magenta porch light reflected in his eyes. It took another moment before he answered, as if composing words in a way that would make sense.

“Look Peter, I’m not sure what’s going on, I’m not even sure if I believe what I saw around here the last few days. I mean, I grew up on Long Island, just ten miles from here, and everything in my world has always been predictable, or at least I understood things as they were. This is something that I still can’t figure out, and frankly it scares the shit out of me. I promise I’ll tell you everything tomorrow, over coffee, with the sun shining and all, okay?”

I nodded yes, and in that moment I felt a lurch in my world, a kind of twist as if a previously unseen dimension shifted revealing some dark abyss.

I slept on Julia’s couch that night, a comfortable soft thing made out of pliant leather. I kept remembering Dennis’s words, how something scared him, something he would reveal in the morning. This is the same Dennis who led raids in the worst shit holes New York City had to offer, faced down psychopaths in dark alleys and chased down the Mujahdeens of Afghanistan with a Ranger company.
I fell asleep with my nine millimeter Glock under the duvet pillow Pam had given me.

There’s a place somewhere between sleep and awakening, a kind of twilight of the mind where you’re never sure where reality lies and the brain wanders on imaginary tangents. I came awake, or maybe sort of half-dreamed of awaking until a booming noise rattled me in earnest. Another thunderclap sounded and this time lighting flashed incandescent light in the dark living room of Julia’s house. I sat up. Something else had aroused me. I heard an urgent voice speaking unintelligible words followed by Julia’s screaming.

I jumped up as another lightning flash sent blazing light burning in my retina. I moved to the end of the room toward the dark hallway, the Glock in a two handed stance. A burning smell stung my nostrils and a vague sense of menace enveloped me as if stalked by an unseen, Stygian predator. I called Dennis’ name, then Julia as something emerged from the open doorway of their room.

It moved shrouded in shadows, vague amorphous forms yet reminiscent of some huge chitineous insect, not quite settled in a permanent shape.

As it passed in front of me, the eyes flashed, lit by some terrible inner light. I felt paralyzed, gripped by the kind of terror primitive people must have felt as the night shadows closed in. It made no noise as the figure crossed the hallway and entered the room across from Julia’s. I shook my head, broke out of my trance and moved into the doorway and entered the room. A darkness surged toward me, I saw the eyes again and a flash of fangs, or was it horns? I fired twice, the flash illuminating the corners of the room and I felt a screaming presence in my head followed by a dark pressure as my consciousness evaporated.

I came to as a damp towel passed across my forehead. I was laying down in the easy chair in the living room. Silver morning light poured through the windows as Julia pulled the towel from my eyes.

“You okay Peter?” she asked.

I sat up. My head pounded as I stood and walked into the kitchen. Dennis handed me a cup of coffee and Julia walked in behind me. I sipped the coffee, leaned against the refrigerator and looked at them, catching the quick look they gave each other.

“Didn’t have a very good night did you?” Dennis said.

“I’m in no mood for this bullshit, I think its time you told me exactly what the hell is going on around here.”

Dennis nodded to Julia as she put a plate of bagels and a pot of coffee on the table. No one said a word until she poured herself coffee and began talking.

“This isn’t easy to explain Peter, that’s why we didn’t tell you right away, because you wouldn’t believe it. Dennis didn’t believe it either until he actually experienced some of the events.”

“Like I did last night?”

“Yeah, like you did last night. It started when I was a little girl. It would talk to me, whisper at night. I thought everyone had an imaginary friend, and of course many did, only mine was real. I lived with it throughout my childhood, my teenage years, even during my first marriage. It was harmless, just an occasional voice that no one else heard. Oh I know what you’re thinking, another whackadoo who hears voices, but this one never suggested anything, just kind of let me know it was there.”

“Did you ever tell anyone about it?”

“At first yes, when I was a child, and of course the adults would pat my head and chuckle. Later on, as I grew older, I figured out it was best to say nothing, then, on my sixteenth birthday, it disappeared.”

“Until now?”

“Until six months ago to be exact. Only now it’s more then a voice. It appears, it shows itself, and it does things.”

“Like last night?”

Julia closed her eyes and rubbed her face. “Yeah, like last night, sometimes more. You saw it?”

“I saw something. I don’t really know what I saw, maybe a nightmare,” I replied, but even as I said the words, I knew there had been something there, eerie and beyond anything I had ever experienced.

“Oh for Chrissake Peter,” Dennis cut in, “that was no nightmare, come here, look at this,” he said, pushing back his chair and standing up. “Let me see your weapon.” I handed him the Glock, knowing what he would do next. He slid back the chamber, pulled out the magazine and emptied it, counting each bullet. “There’s two missing, you shot twice and it was no dream, now look in here.”

He walked to the room opposite Julia’s room, the one where I had fired. “You shot from this spot, directly ahead, I saw you, I was reaching for you when you fired, and that’s where your shots went,” he said pointing to a large framed mirror in the center of the room.

Morning light failed to completely penetrate the shades, leaving the room in a sort of permanent gloom. An oak armoire, easy chair and a large mirror framed with scrolled wood and mounted on wheels, the only furniture in the small space. A sort of shadow hulked inside the mirror and I had the impression that if I looked away, it would somehow move. Dennis flicked the wall switch and light sprang to every corner, dispelling the illusion of the mirror shadow, or had it been only an illusion?

“Go ahead, look, you won’t find the bullet holes.
I’ve been through this before,” Dennis said as he stepped inside the room and ran his hand over the smooth glass.

I saw Julia in the hallway, looking in, and heard her whisper; “It’s inside, that’s where he goes, inside the mirror.”

**

I sat in Donna Alvarez’ living room and looked out the window at St Mark’s church directly across the street. The room was wide and pleasant, filled with heavy antique furniture. A vague scent of incense wafted through the air as Donna returned with a small pot of coffee, cups, milk and sugar on a tray. She placed it on table in front of us and poured me a cup. Her eyes never left mine as she spoke, and her voice held a timbre almost masculine in its strength. I saw that Miss Alvarez held her own in the confidence department.

“So detective, did you speak to your friends, and did you enquire about Father Kilmartin?”

“Yes Ma’am, I did, and perhaps now you’ll be willing to answer my questions?”

“If I can, but first I trust you will have discovered how unusual Father Kilmartin’s death was, and how it followed immediately after he paid a visit to your friend’s house that evening. Did they tell you what he was doing there?”

“Blessing Pam and her fiancée Dennis, and blessing their house. Pretty routine stuff for a Catholic Priest actually.”

“Evidently not that evening. Did they tell you what happened?”

I didn’t answer right away, took another sip of coffee and tried to put my thoughts together. I looked up from my cup into the full bore of Donna Alvarez’s dark eyes.

“You had an experience over there also, didn’t you? You saw it.”

“I saw something, and I’m not sure what I experienced, but it was certainly out of the ordinary, an…apparition. When I asked Julia and Dennis about that night, they told me something like that happened with Father Kilmartin. Something appeared and seemed to fly at him. He ran out to his car, left, and less then five minutes later plowed into a concrete abutment. I have no explanations for any of this, but I’m not sure I’m buying the supernatural story either. Now Miss Alvarez, how about you keep your part of this little bargain: Tell me what you know of this, and why you continue to watch Julia LaRosa?”

“I will, detective, if you promise to keep your mind open, otherwise the answers will never come to you. Even worse, you friends will come to harm, and make no mistakes about it, they are in the most severe danger possible in this world.”
Even now as I write this, I can still feel the chill of those words, the matter of fact assumption of evils we cannot fathom, existing side by side like different sides of a dark honeycomb.

“The first thing you must know detective,” she continued, “is that Father Kilmartin was one of the most well adjusted people I ever met. I’m not saying this because he was my friend, but because I knew him as well as anyone could. He loved his work, believed deeply in God and this country and its people, and because of that love he was willing to sacrifice, to risk. That’s why he went to bless Miss LaRosa and her house, in spite of the warning.”

“Warning?”

“Yes detective, a very clear warning. I work part time in the rectory at St Mark’s, and I received the initial call from Miss LaRosa. They were having, shall we say, spiritual difficulties, and wanted a priest to bless them and the house. She said there might be some problems. I passed the message on to Father Kilmartin and he confided in me as to what happened the day before his visit.”

“The warning?”

“Yes detective, the warning. Father Kilmartin did a lot of work with the elderly and one of his regular stops was the Sunrise Nursing Home on Sunrise Highway, a few miles from here. He always visited a particular gentleman who was afflicted with advanced Alzheimer. Even though the man was catatonic, Father believed a part of his soul remained in the shell of his body and should be tended to. But on that morning something happened.”

At that point I began to see a glimpse of what might come, like the first whiff of smoke from an advancing fire.

“You see detective,” Donna Alvarez continued, “that morning, the man suddenly sat up, looked at Father Kilmartin and said: Wait. There was a light in his eyes, a watchful intelligence, something which the doctors said was not possible. But at that moment, Father Kilmartin sensed a presence, an aura of evil emitting from the man. It startled him so that he backed away from the bed. The man grabbed a note pad and pen from the nightstand and rapidly wrote a few words. He handed it to Father and whispered this: Message from hell, priest.”

I thought about the dead killer, Manuel Ortiz, and his handwritten warning to me. It took a few moments before I could get out the words of my question.

“What did the note say?”

“Stay away priest, the bitch is mine. That’s what it said, and it took the better part of the day to translate, because you see detective, it was written in Aramaic.”

**

It was a day later, on what might have been the last day of my life, and a few hours before the darkness swallowed Donna Alvarez like an implacable monster from the abyss, that we sat, the three of us, Julia, Dennis and myself as Donna explained what she believed haunted Julia. A few days ago I would have laughed it off, but not now, not after what I had seen and experienced. I asked her how she came to know what she was told us.

“I am a Santeras, a Lyalochas, a Santera priestess.”

“What is that?” Dennis asked, “Like voodoo or something?”

“Dennis,” Julia cut in, “shut up will you.”

“No, it’s all right. For the uninitiated, it is a valid question. Santeria is a syncretistic religion. It incorporates the beliefs of the Yoruba and Bantu people who were brought to the Caribbean as slaves, with elements of the Roman Catholic faith. Instead of saints and demons, the equivalents are Orishas. Some are good, others evil, preying on specific humans. You have been chosen by Oggzn, the Orisha of violence and war. He chose you when you were very young.”

“But why me?” Julia whispered, “And why wait so long?”

“We cannot ask, why? Who could know the mind of an Orisha? Time has no meaning for such immortal beings.”

“Come on, how do you know all this, right down to a name?” Dennis said. Donna held his gaze as she replied, making him seem like a small boy questioning a teacher’s lesson.

“It came to me during a Bembe, a shamanistic Santeria ceremony, in a trance. I was visited by Babalz Ayi, known to Catholics as St. Lazarus, patron of the sick.”

“How can we get rid of it, this Oggzn?” I asked.
Donna Alverez shook her head as she replied, “You cannot, get rid of it, as you say. Oggzn is very powerful. The only thing that may work is a Bembe, a specific ritual to invoke Olorun, The Owner of Heaven, with an Oru, a rhythm, then change the Oru to that of Oggzn, and perhaps in such a manner lead him away from you, dear.” Her eyes locked on Julia as she finished.

**

They came just at nightfall, moments after the sunset, as shadows lengthened and the night insects began their cacophony. I don’t know how they got there as no cars pulled up. It was almost as if they waited for that exact moment, two men and a woman carrying drums and satchels filled with a variety of items. They were tall and lanky with burnished skin and thin angular faces as so often seen in the Caribbean or poorer third world countries. They carried strength about them, a surety of spirit that we all felt as Donna introduced them. We sat on cushions in Julia’s living room, emptied of furniture for the occasion.

Several incense pots were placed around the room and lit, filling the air with exotic scents that seemed to penetrate clear through my being. Julia wore a thin halter-top. Dennis and I took our shirts off as instructed. The two men beat a steady rhythm as Donna smeared our faces and chest with a thick red substance, blood from a recently killed animal, laced with herbs acting as an anti coagulant.

A wave of repulsion coursed through me, but the drumming and smoke has all ready taken hold. I felt dizzy, yet lacking fear. I looked over and saw that both Julia and Dennis had their eyes closed and swayed lightly with the rhythm of the drums. Donna held her arms up, chanting softly and waving them gently as if she was some giant seaweed anchored to a distant ocean floor. I don’t know exactly what was in the smoke, although I suspect some of the substances would be similar to Peyote and other hallucinogenics used in Native American ceremonies. The room spun about, and the drumming became a throbbing that carried its own, intense heat to the core of my being. I closed my eyes and felt myself leaving, not like falling asleep, but rather as if entering a previously unexplored consciousness.

A shape formed in the misty smoke, a whirling amorphous shifting of light, and in those layered shadows, I felt an otherworldly menace. I was examined, touched inside out and found
inconsequential with not even the importance a human would attach to an insect. Then I saw Julia, not her form, but rather the aura of her spirit, and in that moment, I understood.

We are beings of energy, and energy never dies. It changes and transforms, jumping from one aging and dying body, to another newly born carrier to begin anew the sequence we call life. But the energy, the electric depths of our souls, never dies. I saw Julia not as she was at the moment, but as she had been thousands of years ago, when her energy inhabited a different form. I sensed a shifting of emotions from the powerful Orisha they had summoned, a deep and jealous longing to possess Julia as she had been possessed all those thousands of years ago.

I opened my mouth to warn it away, and although no sounds came, the message had been conveyed and the Orisha turned on me.

A thunder flash lit the room and a great burst of psychic energy poured out, rolling with the steady rhythm of the drums. I felt a tremendous pressure throughout my body, and just like that, I knew I would die.

In that moment, a great silvery shadow passed between me and the power of the Orisha. The Entity flashed and pulsed, deflecting the demonic energy, and I recognized the aura of Donna Alvarez.
They say the true test of courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of it, forging on in spite of paralyzing terror. Donna Alvarez, perhaps more than anyone else in that room knew what she faced on that night.

The equivalent of a psychic explosion had detonated throughout the house as I struggled from the floor where I’d been thrown. One of the drummers was on his hands and knees retching while the others huddled in a corner. Julia crouched against the far window as whimpering sounds came from the core of her body. Dennis held a protective arm around her, his face a mask of dazed confusion. A smell of singed flesh and burnt incense floated in the air as ghostly noises faded away like the dying tune of a distant vibrating note. But it was Donna who caught my attention.

The Santeria priestess leaned against the front door, slowly opening it. Her face was set in a curious expression, a mask of defiance and resignation. A mist swirled about her and it seemed as if a thousand fireflies jumped and danced in the cyclone buffeting her body. She stepped outside the door, took a couple of steps and collapsed as if all the tendons of her body had suddenly been cut. The mist followed her fall and dissipated as she lay still and the very night seemed to hold its breath.

She was dead when the paramedics arrived. She’d been dead from the moment she collapsed right outside the door that night. Julia left the house the next day and never returned. Dennis retired from the force and they both rented a place in Pennsylvania. I haven’t spoken to either since that night. Some things are better left alone, festering in darkness until they turn into dust and vanish with a fresh breeze.

There was one additional thing I couldn’t let go. Although I had no official jurisdiction, my position still carried some influence. I hounded the Coroner’s office until she agreed to give me five minutes.

She was a short woman in her sixties with forty of those years as a practicing physician. Her name was Sylvia Goldsmith. About a dozen years ago she became county medical examiner and performed the autopsy on Donna Alvarez.

“I don’t know what you want from me detective. You read my report. It was a heart attack, pure and simple,” she said, and as she spoke, her eyes betrayed her. She looked away and fidgeted with some papers on her desk.

“Doctor Goldsmith, I was there when she died. Something happened that night and it was far from natural.”

“There’s nothing indicating foul play if that’s what you mean. I’ve ruled it out conclusively…But, there was one thing I couldn’t put in the report because it made no sense, has no logical explanation, but it might be what you’re seeking.”
She looked up and her eyes met mine. In her strong gaze appeared some confusion, perhaps a hint of uncertainty or fear as she continued.
“It was certainly heart failure that killed her, but the organ itself was malformed.”

“Malformed?”

“Yes detective, as if something reached inside her body and squeezed her heart until it stopped.”

**

It’s a windy, stormy night in Shoreham, Long Island at Julia LaRosa’s empty house. Gusts come through the eaves and soffets, pushing inside the rooms. The doors rattle, and creaking noises can be heard throughout, but it’s only the wind, really. Inside the room opposite Julia’s old bedroom, rests the only piece of furniture remaining: A mirror set in a heavy frame of dark oak. The wind shakes the branches of the tree opposite the window, creating a shifting mosaic of shadows by the erratic blocking of distant street lamps. The shadows move across the face of the mirror and seem to shift inside the very glass as if they were dark wraiths. Layers of darkness jump from a corner of the mirror, seemingly passing through the wall into the waiting night, but of course it’s just a trick of the light.

Of course.