March Madness!!!! Day 24 Prompt: psychic
I couldn't wait to get home, get through chores and dinner, then tackle the pages of Jenny's journals once more. The clues were there, like numbers and symbols in a mathematical equation.
Stay strong, Jenny. So help me God, or so help me physics, I will find you!
Or, so help me psychics.
source
Lately I couldn’t fall asleep at night so I’d go down to the kitchen where Mom kept a laptop on the counter and checked email and news reports throughout the day. She usually forgot to clear her search history so I was able to see that she had read hundreds of Iowa Cold Cases and joined numerous Missing Persons groups on Facebook. She finally created her own account using Ted’s name. Ted Heeler at hotmail. Well, she wasn’t the only Facebook user with a dog or cat as her profile photo and a bogus name to weed out scammers. When the phone rang for Ted or Mrs. Heeler, we knew it was nobody we’d want to listen to.
A psychic was called on for several Iowa cases. She was an ordinary wife and mother until lightning struck outside her bedroom window and zapped her metal bed frame. From then on, she’d have visions and allegedly solved a few Missing Persons cases. She was dead now, but Mom must have grown desperate enough to start seeking paranormal measures to find Jenny.
I returned to Jenny’s room and hunted for things that a psychic might ask to touch, if I ever found anyone. Those rosary beads might be nothing but a distraction if Jenny had barely handled them. All her stuff was in clear plastic bins with lids. I started digging through them, Toby at my feet, because he hated letting me out of his sight. Bonzo was fine in the barn with Ted, but Toby was something else.
The beads turned up in the pocket of her jeans. I held them under the 40-watt lamp on Jenny’s nightstand. How did it go? Start with the pewter cross, pray an Our Father, repeat ten Hail Mary’s five times in a row. Something like that. It sounded tortuous to me. But Jenny was into herbal tarot and Celtic lore. One of her journal entries was about tommyknockers. Some old guy at Hooters had told her about miners who’d hear knocking and evacuate just before a collapse, and nothing but the paranormal presence of these tommyknockers could account for the warning knocks. Transcendental Meditation caught her eye, and the rosary, she wrote, was just another way to meditate, so she was giving it a shot.
Most of her journal entries were short, and she’d expand more on these topics in google documents. I hadn’t told anyone else I knew her passwords, because a lot of what she wrote was stupid and embarrassing, and she’d kill me for reading it myself, much less sharing it with smarmy cops and Sheriff Burt Bonar, and God forbid our parents should read about her getting an IUD or getting high with her show choir buddies.
Rosary Man had been a senior when Jenny was a freshman. Aha. Now we were getting somewhere.
“This guy is kinda cute,” Jenny wrote in Spanish, which would shut Mom and Dad out. “He lives with his widowed mother who looks like Doris Day and used to sing opera in Chicago until a salesman swept her off her feet and she moved to Iowa.” That was something you wouldn’t find online, or it’d be in her google docs. “He went to Catholic schools K to 12,” kindergarten to senior year, “and he’s holier than the Pope.”
And his name is…? Come on, Jenny, spell it out for me.
Finally: Jordon Blume.
He’d heard she was working at Hooters so he went there one night just to see her and “witness” to the power of prayer warriors. Jenny liked that: Prayer Warriors. Whenever you’re stuck at a red light or waiting in line at WalMart, try praying rosaries for whoever is on your mind, or for whoever is in most need of mercy at that hour. And if you’re ever in peril, pray the St. Michael Prayer. Better yet, pray it throughout the day for whoever is in most need…
source
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen
What if this zealot, Jordan Blume, had abducted Jenny and was holding her captive in his mother’s basement? Sara Lacy had given me her email address, so I sent her screenshots of what I'd found. She might do a stakeout, follow this Blume guy around, see if he was up to something.
Psychics. Catholics. New Age Physics. All of it was outside my realm, but having Jenny lost was also outside all my skill sets.
Toby nudged me, as if sensing my mental distress, and laid his chin on my leg. I wrapped my arms around him, something Ted and Bonzo weren’t too receptive to, and he muffled the sound of my sobs in the night.
March Madness!!!! Day 24 Prompt: psychic
Check Out The @FreeWriteHouse Prompt Of The Day By @MarianneWest
Okay, now I am crying along with you
Awww. Sorry/thank you. Your little Lady is just the sort of dog I put in this story, a rescue, an unwanted, abused, or neglected dog, who ultimately rescues the humans as much as they humans rescue the dogs. Like Pets for Vets. We know the story! So much to be said for pet therapy. Thanks for reading and commenting. :)
You are most welcome, we all benefit from sharing our love with one another.
I really like this piece. I think you have done such a great job modernizing the story. For me, it is so difficult to write in the present era. You really set the scene very nicely and the journal entries were nicely incorporated into the story! 👍
Posted using Partiko iOS
Thank you!
I tend to write like we're still living in the 1970s. Going contemporary is hard but not as hard for me as historical fiction set in foreign lands.
Thanks again for reading and commenting. :)
Oh I hope Kris is on to something!
Or do I?
Love the video "It was very upsetting and I didn't know what was happening."
#mmfan
You actually watched the video? Bless you!
That psychic was called on my sister's case, but she said one of the police offers made her nervous and uncomfortable. I cannot imagine that a psychic gift could be available on tap. I liked the premise of Whoopi Goldberg surprised by a ghost in "Ghost." That Patrick Swayze movie. The paranormal fascinates me but I'm not wired for it. I'm stuck with only five senses. :) Thanks for reading and commenting!
I don't know how you did it. It must have been horrible. Still has its moments I am sure.
I was young. Denial mode was effective. I've heard that if you lose a close loved one in childhood (someone younger than a grandparent), you don't really start to process what happened until you turn 30-ish. That was true for me. The older I get, the more I realize how hard on my parents it really was. The more I see how it affected my sisters. When you're only 13, denial and selective amnesia can keep you going for years. :) Thank you!