Sparrow's Nest

In Grays Harbour, west of Hoquiam, it was a remote village, peaceful and scarcely people, beautiful by the silent creeks where the Ashlocks lived on Grays Harbour Boulevard until industrialising in Westport and Aberdeen brought foreign cargo ships to the port. Then by the coastal roads, pubs and nightclubs sprung up for those splenetic sailors of no manners. It turned to be a dumping area for waste and stowage, containers packed or unpacked and rapidly growing in numbers in cleared acres. Panic started with aliens – Hispanics and Chinese, yellow fever, Spaniards, bastards and Asians, Latinos, Filipinos, Negroes and no-noes. Thus seamen or sailors ran after the girls, fighting, kissing, raping, stabbing, cutting, bleeding, bickering or just throwing out, wild and uncivilised – a bit more than the Wild West used to be. And the mammas locked their daughters inside the houses to keep away from spores of drunken seamen who appeared in different colours during the nights.
Emilie was six years older than Sara Ashlock. She was allowed to hang around in the pubs down the coast. Some girls earned while some girls gave birth to babies. Emilie Ashlock always talked about adventurous nightlife, drinking and dancing with the mad crowd out there, she said, far better than singing in church on a Sunday. Filipinos got rocked with just two pints of beer while the Spaniards cut open the mans with swinging daggers.
One afternoon Emilie took her sister, fourteen year old Sara Ashlock, to Sparrow’s Nest, a pub on the water’s edge.
It was a stunning view with the Bowerman Field lying to the southeast, aeroplanes touched down and shorebirds hovered up in the sky. Sara Ashlock came across a weather-beaten short brown man who was an islander and called himself Don Ebra. He got an insignia of a state burnt in skin on his left arm with those letters in English, “On Her Majesty’s Service – Property of the Maldive Islands”.
Sara asked, “What’s that emblem on your arm?”
Don Ebra replied, “My countrymen cannot go abroad without this logo of the Coat of Arms with the eleven-leafed coconut palm and the crossed flags of the crescent and it goes with smallpox vaccine administered to the shoulder with a BCG injection heated on a Bunsen burner apparatus that only the good English doctor of the WHO knows to use one. Then they issue us with a hardcover British passport in Colombo.”
“Did it hurt you?” she asked.
“No, I only felt the pain of relief…after several years of waiting.”
“What’s that you’re wearing on your brows?”
“Cosmetic,” he grimaced, “Islanders wear them for beauty.”
“And this?” she asked pointing to an armband on his biceps.
“Aha! This…? Hmm! It’s called fanditha – black magic worn on me for self-protection. No disease, no evil, no financial loss…it’s everything. I don’t get lost on the sea and dogs don’t bark at me.” Don Ebra grinned exposing two rows of stained teeth and digging for his waist cord that held his mundo – sarong. “This silver locket contains a talisman with a magical charm that makes others liking me. If you wear mascara on your eyes and hold this charm against your skin, you can fall anyone to follow your footsteps to your door and do what you please. All you need to do is just stare into the eyes of a stranger of your choice for a brief moment and walk away.”
“It looks lovely,” the girl cried.
He removed the talisman and passed it to her. “Now you make me a girl in Grays Harbour. There is a wife in every port. That is why sailors journey around the wide world for home is in all four corners of North, South, East and West, in the four seasons of hot, cold, dry and wet…it shows in the four hands of my Omega watch.”
She exclaimed, “I’m holding magic!”
“It’s the Magic of Orquidea and you’re watched by Anzala Fahsha.”
“Who’s that?”
“Spirit of the sea, the queen of waves, she’s the desire of lust and the manjé of the reefs. She becomes visible and invisible.”
For a while they talked. Emilie, almost over the top, flirted with some Filipinos by the bar counter. Sara insisted going home. It was getting late. They exchanged addresses, as usual, merely to keep the postman up on heels.
Sara returned home with the locket she thought was a cute little thing. Soon her mother discovered that she went to the coast with Emilie. Her mother beaten her and locked the girl in the loft. Sara could not join Emilie to go to Sparrow’s Nest that nightfall. She never saw that man again.
As light faded from the sky, Sara dried her eyes and sat watching through the casement. On the other side of the road, the church loomed and a maze of grass kept those unusually tall tombstones glooming in white silhouettes and quite aloof. Some perimeters marked with boarder stones and some sheltered in shrines – the dead carefully buried and laid to rest. Further ahead, a luminous statue of an angel stood mutely dead holding a boat, dead as its creator wished to be, dead but not decaying with sparrows on her shoulders. No form of life down there. In the deepening sky over the church, many birds circled to nest for the night.
Father Peacock appeared in a black cassock and he was holding a gothic thurible, burning the incense and smoking the maze and graves in his cemetery of the buried dead. Then there was a stream of smoke coming from the boat in the extended arm of the stone statue. Father Peacock seemed unaware of it as he continued to walk down the aisles, perhaps because the angel’s arm was yards above his head. A while later he disappeared into the church leaving behind a thick layer of a holy smoke lying low over the creepy grass. The whole place was white and filled with smoke in curls hung on the foliages. It was a Friday eve and there was little or just nothing better to do.
The door of the shrine that stood by the statue opened slowly. A fair-looking Chinese woman with silky long black hair stepped into the graveyard. She wore a long white Chinese costume. Her silky long hair reached below knees. Sarah Ashlock noticed an armband on her left biceps that reminded her of Don Ebra she met that afternoon. Sara was holding the locket in her palm so she opened the fingers for a glimpse. Her glare returned to the lonely image of the floating woman beyond the tombstones slowly advancing towards the church.
The Chinese woman opened a rear door of the church making a chink of light appear against the black wall.
After hours in the sleepless night she saw the Chinese girl reappear at the door and return gradually to the shrine but she noticed this time the white figure was levitating in the full moon light. She looked like an angel with long black hair. Sara fell asleep holding the locket in her palm.
Next morning her mother let her out. Sara had breakfast and thought she’d wear the mascara. She tried little wondering whom she’d stare at. As Sara stepped down from the threshold stone into an early morning sun wearing the locket around her neck and against the skin, she got shocked to see a hound dog that stopped to wag its tail. She stared briefly and hastily staggered back through the door closing sharply. She washed the mascara quickly not to try it again. That was 13th Friday morning.
In her next attempt, she ran into the graveyard behind her house, paused to look up at the white angel statue. She entered the shrine and found nothing there. The walls were black, only the stone lying in the middle was white. She cared not to read the gold-plated metal piece with someone’s inscription on it. She then headed to the church, walked around to the front and slowly opened the door that lead to the Vestibule. Sara knew exactly where the priest would be – he lay bare in the Lady Chapel. She advanced slowly up the aisle, paused by the elevated Virgin Mary. She prayed quite briefly. She noticed some droplets of blood hitting and staining the plinth. Sara raised her face and she saw the eyes of Mother Mary, she got tears that turned red as the drops hit the base.
Sara Ashlock crossed the high alter while the holy figures watched down on her as she advanced to the Lady Chapel – the whole place empty.
She stepped into the hall observing the lights streaming down from tall clerestory windows fitted with coloured glass. She never ever felt so scared to enter a church in her life before. She found the priest lying on the vesting table, his deep set of dark blue eyes fixed at the wooden ceiling directly above him. Sara reached out an arm with her five fingers open to touch his forehead when she felt someone’s presence behind. She thought it could be the Chinese woman. She paused and tossed a face back to find a topless woman standing inches from her. Her eyes were white completely. She screamed. Her scream echoed through the halls and gathered people into the Lady Chapel. They found the girl holding her face firmly covering her eyes with both hands and just screaming. Father Peacock lay unconscious.
They were rushed to the Gray’s Anatomy Clinic where Father Peacock was pronounced dead.
Sara Ashlock recovered from shock. She was tested for having no involvement with the priest. Sara was examined thoroughly but the girl hadn’t undergone a sexual contentment while the dead body of the priest proved he did and eventually caused him death.
There was a police investigation that opened a file for this girl who talked utter nonsense. Sara never mentioned meeting a man called Don Ebra on the other day at Sparrow’s Nest and that she owned a silver locket he gave her.
Sara Ashlock converted to be a lunatic and she became pregnant too. Her mother wanted to find out what lies she was holding. Sara gave a painful birth to a baby boy in the following year. Her eyeballs rolled to hide the grey-coloured irises under the eyelids and they appeared completely white until she got relieved from pain in the convulsion. The boy got dark blue eyes. He was called John Sparrow and there was no doubt that the baby belonged to Father Peacock. He grew up to be a replica of the pastor with sparkling brown hair. Sparrow was raised by Aunt Emilie. Sara Ashlock was locked in an asylum for her entire life. Folks in Hoquiam called him Peacock Junior. Sara never believed he was her son though she gave birth to him physically.
In her psychiatric asylum, somewhere south of Seattle, Sara still talked about the spirit without eyes – seeing one and feeling one. Nobody wanted to believe her other than Aunt Emilie who got a slight suspicion.

John Sparrow was born on 10th March, Tuesday, in 1954. He joined the United States military in 1970 as a volunteer to go for war in Vietnam. John Sparrow was such a brilliant student in Mathematics who graduated high school in Tacoma. That won him a training course as a pilot. In huge demand of new recruits, the US was enrolling young people to the military. In two years time he became a fighter pilot and soon shipped to Vietnam. Regrettably, his life short lived. John Sparrow got killed in a jetfighter over Tribu Muong near Làng Mõ in North Vietnam on 6th September 1972 when he was eighteen. John Sparrow was manoeuvring an F105 Wild Wiesel in a dive bombing attack in blind sight to the fatal enemy missile that hit his aircraft.
Following a series of reluctant negotiations, the war offensive relieved by 1973 though North and South remained divided and the missing bodies of the fallen soldiers were unclaimed.
The Vietcong army that arrived at the scene of the wreckage had actually observed the two pilots on the ground separated from the aircraft. They were not sure whether they bailed out or they managed to crawl out. John Sparrow was alive that moment. A longhaired yellowish woman of Chinese origin sat next to him with his head placed in her lap until he died a moment later. And then the girl disappeared. Nobody knew who this pilot was or the woman. His body was left in the jungle to decay like any fallen soldier’s grave. It did not appear in any of the records.
In 1995, Vietnamese government revealed the figures of the dead and wounded during the war from 1959 to 1975 though not of genocides as of the Khmer Rouge iniquity. Some of the dead bodies of the fallen marines were returned to the United States over the last two decades.
John Sparrow’s body was repatriated in 1995 and in the early spring of 1998, Dr Hazel Rush got an assignment to attend to his remains to begin a forensic examination.

“Sara,” Hazel asked, “Are you positive he is not your son?” She conducted long interrogations with this woman over a week.
“No, I never had a relationship with anyone. I’m still a virgin,” the fifty-eight year old white woman said. Her hair turned white entirely. All her life, she had been kept in the Bigfoot Psychedelic Hospital in Orting. Sister Emilie had died seventeen years ago. Her mother died in 1959. Sara Ashlock was left alone. She got no knowledge about John Sparrow and Dr Hazel Rush decided not to mention of his death that occurred twenty-six years ago in Vietnam.
Dr Hazel Rush, a twenty-eight year old young-looking little woman sat shrunk than her size, beaten and slowly turning the pages of her notebook. She had done thorough examination on John Sparrow’s leftovers and the DNA tests had proven that his father was the priest who died an unnatural cause of death on a Friday the thirteenth. And because of that his blood, his hair texture, semen and important samples were stored in the Gray’s Anatomy Clinic. According to police reports she read, the prime suspect of his murder happened to be Sara Ashlock but there was no solid proof to support it. Medical reports stated that the priest had had sexual intercourse but Sara Ashlock did not. In 1953, they did not have DNA tests to find a source that might have had sex with the priest. So someone else was out there that night while Sara Ashlock was locked up in the loft. And now Sara’s crazy story seemed to be rational though not realistic. She talked about a Chinese girl who came out from the shrine and entered the church. Police couldn’t find a clue.
Dr Hazel Rush decided to wrap up the scientific investigation and do some brainstorming with a bit of psychology put in practise. She noted one thing missing in the police report, “They did not mention Don Ebra or it was omitted for some reason. What else can you tell about him, Sara?”
“A sailor I met in Sparrow’s Nest,” replied the woman.
“You told me Emilie was with you that day. Did she not see him?”
“She was drunk.”
“You certainly didn’t have an affair with him?”
“No. I am a virgin.” Why should she? The DNA proved Father Peacock’s son, not Don Ebra’s. The only mystery – why did Sara give birth to John Sparrow who did not have any DNA to prove she was his mother.
“Sara,” Hazel asked, “Tell me, whose child do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. He’s born from the grave.”
Dr Hazel was shocked, “Born from the grave!”
“I saw the Chinese girl who came out from the shrine. She was hiding there waiting for father’s signal. She got very long black hair,” uttered Sara.
“What was his signal?”
“Father produced a smoke out from the angel’s pot.”
“How far is this shrine from the angel statue?” the doctor asked.
“On the left,” Sara remembered everything like yesterday because she experienced few things in her life after being locked up in the lunatic asylum.
Hazel paused to flick the pages, “Where is the amulet?”
“I do not know. I have not been there for a long time, not after my sister died. I hung it on the lock of the casement of the loft when my mother locked me up on the following night because I might run again.”
“Did you use it again?”
“No. Worse if a hound follows me.”
Hazel thought about it. Could it be there after forty-five years? “Do you say you still see the spirit?”
“Yes, she stands there by the corner. She does not talk. Some nights the whole place filled up with the scent of orchids”
“How does she look?”
“She is topless, poor girl. Olive skin and black hair, she wears a black wrap, long golden necklace and a silver girdle on the hips. Her eyes white completely and an armband on her left biceps. I always smell orchids…”
“Why do you think she visits you?”
“She did not tell me. She does not speak.”
“Okay Sara, you can rest. I will come again next week.”
“Thanks for those roses. Bring me orchids next time when you come.”
Hazel felt a brush of cilium lift up on her skin. She paused to stare at the white little lady lying in bed. Her greyish irises rolled under the eyelids so that they appeared like a pair of white goggles. “Don’t do that, Sara!” Dr Hazel said. “Durch die Blume…” she whispered closing the door, “sprechen.”
When she came out, she could see the red peak of Mt Rainier and the last lights told her that it would fall dark soon. She hurried to the Chrysler to take that sixty kilometre drive to Seattle. Somewhere she changed her mind and turned towards Aberdeen to reach Grays Harbour in Hoquiam.

Hazel slept at Hoquiam. Next morning she was early, had breakfast and picked few magazines about shorebirds and maps. As she rolled down West Emerson Avenue, she caught sight of Sparrow’s Nest that stood by the water’s edge. Up ahead, this road led some two miles to Grays Harbour Boulevard. She could tell how the two Ashlock girls would run up to the pub here way back in 1953. She got out from the sedan and reached Sparrow’s Nest that was closed for ages. Hazel peaked through the cracks to find surprisingly more light inside an old coffeehouse than one could imagine. The roof got gaps and the birds found a huge cradle of nests. She returned to the car and headed up the road driving by the estuary. Hazel saw birds entirely, shorebirds to be specific with and as to the magazine she was holding – some birds migrated as far from Argentina. This was a place of cradles and graves, nests and mates. Hazel had never been to Hoquiam before.
As a forensic scientist and a DNA expert, Hazel knew the eggs could fertilize an offspring. If conditions were right, any DNA that bore somebody’s odd genes could develop cells and forms. The shorebirds, as to the magazine, sometimes steal eggs from other’s nests and raised babies; some leave the eggs in other’s nests to let them raise their own stock of the different kind. Some birds left the chicks with the male and took a day off to screw with another male. The mad birds, she thought, the DNA would never discipline to produce a classified one dynasty so they multiply not just only in kind but in different species and diversity. Mad birds! And the Bible did say to multiply in pairs so she knew the odd was out there too. Possibly, Sara Ashlock was right. He came from the grave. John Sparrow was an odd one to come from a mother and not to have her DNA. He was stolen and she was robbed.
Hazel Rush turned to Grays Boulevard and then concentrated for the house of the Ashlocks. She saw the church looming in the faint sun. She stopped there. In a moment, she stood by the statue, one arm extended to hold a boat and sparrows sat in a row over shoulders. Hazel noticed the shrine with a dark bluish door. She knew if she now faced the opposite direction, she’d see the house of the Ashlocks, the window on the loft.
She turned slowly to stare right at the window she knew would be there. Her cilium turned up. Forty-five years ago Sara Ashlock was locked up there. She remembered the talisman – it’d be there hanging on the lock like a pendulum. She left the shrine to attend to the loft first. She had prepared a worksheet of things she would be investigating on this mission. Obviously, the church and the shrine were two important places listed down.
She knocked the door, “Knock! Knock! Knock! Who’s there?”
And a Taiwanese girl who couldn’t spell a word appeared at the door. It made things easy because she remembered the spirit did not talk. She used her limbs and climbed the staircase to reach the loft.
This girl married a Scottish American and they were the new owners of the Ashlocks. Hazel found the loft fastened in a lock. Fortunately, the Taiwanese girl brought a key and opened the forever locked loft.
This little loft smelt rotten. “Birds, birds,” the girl ran away. A couple of sparrows had found a nest right under the bed little Sara slept – in shelter of the very species they should belong.
She saw the amulet hanging down the latch key over the top frame of the casement. She picked it and the sparrows chirped dissatisfied. “It doesn’t belong to you,” she uttered. She took few photographs. She knew there wasn’t any to search in here. She got out quickly and crossed the graveyard to reach the shrine.
She began taking pictures. She recorded every moment on a journalist device. Whoever who did the shrine had done elusive work. She wasn’t familiar with the carvings on the white walls – bamboos, lanterns and birds. She paid every attention carefully to details not to miss anything as she would do on a dead corpse. The lock on the door was designed like a lantern and made of malted copper – nothing done at home. The door was not locked though.
She entered the shrine. The walls were dark blue, painted in some dye colour with the same design as of the outside. A superb gold-plated metal piece bore an inscription and Hazel Rush hurried to turn over her notebook to note it down after taking a photograph. She scribbled but the pen ran dry. Hazel scratched and it started to write but in red ink. She scratched hard and it finally turned black. She glanced at her watch to grasp the date and suddenly suspended to see cilium rising on her arm. She felt as if the ghost of the topless woman standing behind her. It was Thursday the twelfth, March 1998.
Tonight – she should be here. Dr Hazel touched the amulet in her pocket. Should she wear it against her skin and draw the mascara on her eyes – Friday the 13th begins tonight.
She scribbled, “JULIET WONG, 1895 – 1924”
She whispered, “Juliet Wong! Twenty-nine year old Chinese…Sara said she saw this woman come out of this place…”
Hazel got done with the shrine and headed to the church. She decided not to give a clue of what she might observe that night in the graveyard to the pastor of the ministry. Hazel met an old priest who was more pleased to show around. She paused in front of Virgin Mary. Everything kept clean here, polished and rubbed. Still she noticed a faint stain on the plinth under Mother Mary. She did not have to speak out her mind because she knew Father Willow won’t believe a single word of what she was witnessing or talk mad of miracles that could only happen to the Saints – Virgin Mary.
“Who put that stone angel in the churchyard with the sparrows?” she asked the pastor.
“That was done somewhere around 1924,” said Father Willow.
“Along with the shrine?” she asked.
“Along with the shrine,” he confirmed.
“By whom?” she asked.
“A Chinese merchant called Ling, her husband,” father tried to recall.
“Did you hear about John Sparrow?”
“Indeed, the son of Father Peacock. His mother is still alive. I heard he died in the Vietnam War.”
“He’s dead regrettably but do you know other ministers in this church having a record of fathering a son or of such conduct?”
“Not at all, no, I am the third priest after Father Peacock.”
“How long have you been around?”
“Twenty-three years.”
“What about the past, no records as such?”
“No, not to my knowledge, we have records…I’ll show you in the Priory.”
Hazel referred to some of the priests but there was no such history. Doctor picked the registers of the deaths and quickly got to the point she looked for. She took pictures of the old pages, some burnt in the ink lines. It was nothing at all like a DNA examination but a forensic study, perhaps, of the occult that Father Willow knew little or nothing about. She scribbled briefly about the woman buried in the shrine. This woman came from a Chinese descend, born in San Francisco. She was a stripper in the West Coast, married to a wealthy Chinese merchant of the silk trade who ran bankrupt because of her lavish manners. Juliet Wong gave birth to a son and a daughter believed to be alive in San Francisco. Chang Ling, as the silk trader was called, built the shrine for his last leftovers.
Juliet Wong died of avian infection caused from a couple of sparrows she carried as pets. In 1924, the virus was identified as malaria.
It was a fascinating story she dug from Father Willow though nowhere near what she was expecting – a study of the forensics. It was all history. Still there was something that made this woman somewhat interesting. She behaved like a chimp monkey or a chimpanzee. And her phantom behaved like one too. All those birds that gave the ass to other males – they all got the same DNA. Now all she wanted was a photograph to see how she looked like in extravagant.
Dr Hazel Rush prepared her next stop – San Francisco.

That night she parked her Chrysler beside the graveyard and stayed in the car with her camera ready. It was a lovely moonlit night, in fact, a full moon though it was hidden out of sight behind the black treetops. Hazel was told a lunar eclipse would occur that night. She wore the locket that contained an amulet around her neck in a manner that it remained touching skin but she did not wear mascara.
When the lights grew dark, around nine-thirty, Hazel saw a stream of smoke released from the boat in the extended arm of the statue. Hazel took some photos without a flash so that the statue would appear in the deep blue curtain of the sky.
By then the spirit had stepped on the graveyard and she missed it probably – she did not see her come out of the shrine. A Chinese girl in a yellow robe passed so close to the Chrysler. She wore a broad smile and so enchanting. A second later, Hazel noticed the girl in the yellow robe crossing the graveyard and heading towards the shrine. It was a bit late for Hazel who only managed to capture some shots of her from the rear. The Chinese girl in the yellow robe already reached the door of the shrine and she was disappearing.
Hazel was caught with a bit of annoyance than fear because somebody was trying to play a hoax. She climbed down from the Chrysler and ran to the shrine. Hazel was not a tall girl, slim and hair cut wavy to the shoulders. She kicked open the door to find the interior in a luminous bright light. She felt a sudden shock of sweat pour down her body to dampen her pink pants and white shirt. On the opposite side of the tombstone there stood the spirit in real existence looking down on her and grinning with round whitish cheeks exposing two sets of tiny white teeth. She looked beautiful but scary too with large white goggles of milky eyes, not so Chinese, but her silky long black hair fell over shoulders partially covering her tits. She was topless and wrapped in a black skirt. She got the long golden necklace, the armband and the girdle. She was the spirit who visited Sara Ashlock.
“Who are you?” Doctor asked trembling and couldn’t hold the camera steady in her hand but clicked a snapshot. “I am your friend. Don’t be afraid. Where’s the girl who came in? The Chinese…”
Somehow the flash disappointed the spirit. She spat at the gold-plated metal piece and then she got red saliva oozing down the corners of her wide mouth. She tucked the black wrap to wipe her mouth. Her legs got disclosed at length but before the spotter could click another photograph, Anzala Fahsha vanished into the dark bluish walls of the haunted shrine leaving behind the scent of orchids.
Dr Hazel Rush got more scared when the spirit disappeared. Then she felt the strange ghost standing behind her in the graveyard. And who was the Chinese girl with silky long hair? She walked down the road and even smiled at her. Then she crossed the graveyard to the shrine.
Still Hazel Rush got few more important things to do before leaving. She searched for an aid to obtain a portion of the red fluidic substance the spirit spat to the metal piece. And that was all left behind from the apparition – red-coloured saliva. Finally, she wiped the metal piece with her white shirt and hurriedly got out of the place.
Next she obtained a knife and a small bag and rushed to the church. The empty halls lit in candlelight. The holy figures created shadows of the flicking images silently. Doctor scratched the wooden plinth to obtain some of the stains that Sara said she saw dropping from the eyes of Virgin Mary forty-five years ago. Hazel Rush managed to scratch some sharp stains spilt in a groove on the plinth and otherwise the wood had been polished repeatedly.

Hazel quit the trip to San Francisco and drove back to Seattle. She got busy to obtain a DNA from the saliva sample which now the doctor knew was blood. And this blood evolved to give evidence of a 99% match to that of the remains of John Sparrow. Therefore Hazel Rush concluded, whoever the spirit was, she played an important roll perhaps as a bearer and that blood she spat from her mouth gave evidence that John Sparrow was her son. Working hard on the stains scratched from the plinth, it also proved 99% match to John Sparrow. The two bloods found in the plinth, dropped from the eyes of Virgin Mary, and the one spat on the tombstone turned out to be an exact match. So they belonged to one person – assumingly of Juliet Wong but at this stage she noted down as Anzala Fahsha, a name she heard from Sara. It could be that the Chinese girl she saw was Juliet Wong and the topless woman she saw was Anzala Fahsha. They could also be the same.
Oddly, Hazel discovered that she captured no photograph of Anzala Fahsha in the camera or even the smoke from the boat in angel’s hand. Nor did the rear shots of the Chinese girl appeared on the snaps. Hazel Rush dreamt out a conclusion that the spirit spat blood to give her some evidence of the DNA to match with the female corpse in the shrine and that of Juliet Wong – the Chinese stripper. Her phantom was behind it all.
If that was the case, Sara Ashlock spoke truth. John Sparrow was born from the grave. It took a couple of weeks for her to obtain the DNA tests and arrive at this conclusion but dead for others. She still wondered how Sara gave birth to John Sparrow physically.
While Hazel worked on the DNA, she collected information about the first son of Juliet Wong – known as Horatio Ling and the daughter – known as Janet Ling. Hazel Rush found their names and addresses on the San Francisco Telephone Directory. She made calls and soon arranged appointments. They both spoke fluently with western accents that varied in the Californian coastline of a hugely multicultural populace.
Dr Hazel Rush sent official letters to the Mayor, the church ministry, FBI and the police to assist her with the investigations and open the graves to obtain some samples for her to conduct forensic examinations and DNA tests on the bodies of Father Peacock and Juliet Wong to conclude this investigation. Her requests were denied. She got in touch with Father Willow on several occasions on the phone but he seemed very reluctant to allow disturbing the buried laid to rest. However, Hazel learnt Father Peacock was forty-five years of age when he died. There was a brother living in Vancouver, Jimmy Peacock, and he was very old. Still Hazel got a positive response and arranged some experts from Vancouver to collect sample from him and do DNA test which proved a 96% match to the priest. With all witnesses gathered from Hoquiam, John Sparrow was undeniably a son of Father Willow.

Hazel Rush wanted to experience this mystery and how it evolved at first hand. Next she drove to San Francisco without arranging a team of experts.
Hazel called in first at Horatio Ling and to her surprise she found a white man. He was eighty-seven years old but in good health. Horatio got a large family of grandchildren and great-grand children. Hazel Rush obtained blood samples from him. She asked, “Do you know you did have a brother in Grays Harbour?”
Horatio Ling shook his head and replied, “My mother died young when I was of the age thirteen. She’s extravagant. She might as well have more children that I might not know about.”
“Did your father bring you guys up?”
He replied, “He travelled a lot, San Francisco to China, we call him father, Mr Ling. He died a year after my mother’s death.”
Doctor Rush decided to spurn the story of John Sparrow.
Hazel’s next stop was at Janet Ling living with her grandchildren in San Jose. Here she found an eighty-one year old Hispanic woman. She found them all quite fascinating. So this mother, Juliet Wong, was a Chinese bird who let her husband look after the children while she mated with customers in the Californian coastline, produced a litter of Chinese puzzle and continued with her extravagant profession as a stripper.
Janet passed a black and white photograph of her mother, Juliet Wong – she was undeniably a Chinese beauty with silky long black hair that reached her knees. She was precisely the woman Hazel Rush saw crossing the graveyard and entering the shrine. She decided not to mention this either.
It turned out to be absolutely a sister and two brothers. Their mother was in fact Juliet Wong though their biological fathers were many and unknown except that of John Sparrow. Cheng Ling had fathered none for Juliet Wong. Both Horatio and Janet called Cheng Ling their father.
So it ended very clear to Dr Hazel and she put them down in her files weather people would believe it or not. There still remained one question that Dr Hazel got no answer and the most important one. How and why did the girl called Sara Ashlock give birth to Juliet Wong’s third known son? Dr Hazel Rush decided not to mention of John Sparrow or the apparition to anyone of the old folks and left San Jose. She returned to Seattle to continue with DNA research on the recent collections from the Lings.

Dr Hazel Rush carried the amulet that she wore next to skin ever since she wanted to discover the magic of its charm. She was twenty-eight years old when she had investigated this mysterious case of John Sparrow – the corpse remains repatriated from Vietnam of a fallen angel. She still hoped to find an answer how Sara gave physical birth and without having sexual intercourse with the priest. If Sara Ashlock spoke truth, all Hazel required was to undergo that unique experience. Hazel then started to wear the talisman in a black armband on her left biceps as the phantom did and that strange man called Don Ebra the sailor.
Back in Seattle, once again, she embarked on DNA tests and found those two Ling matches proving a brother and sister in Horatio and Janet – and did John Sparrow. Well, alright, John Sparrow was born from the grave – the spirit who had sexual intercourse with a priest and entered Sara for a vessel to give birth for the baby called John Sparrow – Dr Hazel concluded.
DNA specialist, Dr Hazel, desperately wanted to check the real DNA from the corpse of the longhaired Chinese stripper born in San Francisco, buried in that shrine of Juliet Wong. How could that red blood saliva bring about the relative match to all those Wongs?
She couldn’t explain how Sara Ashlock became the vessel to carry a baby to give birth to John Sparrow whose father and mother got nothing to do with her. Hazel’s quest grew broader and she knew the answer lies in the spirit of Anzala Fahsha. The scientist turned psychedelic – she spent nights to think about the image that stood inside the shrine of Juliet Wong. She wore the silver locket touching skin and full of expectations to have that experience precisely like Sara Ashlock. Hazel Rush kept reading her name, Anzala Fahsha.