Paranormal Case 9

Chapter Twenty-Six

Though still charged with fear and excitement, Valeria lay in her hotel bed just reflecting on what had phenomenally transpired that night. She now felt a greater affinity for her family, and particularly her great grandmother Luciana, who like the woman's own daughter, Maria, was little understood in life, harboring so much power and insight. It was now known to Valeria that both this mother and daughter could pass freely and at will into the spiritual dimension. And it was a world she was now certain co-existed with the everyday dealings in life.

Could Alida at last be free from her tortuous cycle, she wondered. Roaming the hotel—once her beautiful home? Looking fruitlessly for a lover whom she now could rest assured was not worth the agony she had put herself through over him. For she had certainly suffered both in life and in death for over a century.

Valeria waited until midmorning in her room to make two phone calls. The first was to Travis, for whom she found his line still dead. The second call was to the Leon's home to check on Natalia.

"Hello, Lupe?"

"Oh, Valeria. Bless you for calling! Natty got home with us last night OK and fell right into bed. I wasn't even able to wash or dress her sore feet until later. They were so scraped up. She must have walked an hour or more along the forest road to find you in Carmel.

"I know, Lupe. The poor thing. But I can assure you, while she was with me, she felt nothing. She was the whole time in her trance. I'm just so glad she's home safe now. With you all."

"It's such a mystery once again, why she left," her mother continued. "All of this. Like so much with her is unexplainable. How she knew you were back here on the Peninsula . . . and where exactly to find you."

"It's just part of her exceptional powers, Lupe. Over time you'll all have to accept your daughter is very different, but special in many ways. And trust me, her gifts in this area of sensitivity are extremely rare."

"Well, we . . . my husband, Soto and Ortencia, all still see this more of a curse, Valeria. And we all suffer from it."

"Yes. I understand how difficult it's been for you. But Lupe, what I have learned in my study of these things these past two years, and their effect upon the living, is there is a side to paranormal occurrences where true evil comes in from other darker forces in an opportune way. Attempting to hijack the good supernatural energy with bad. This polarity exists in our world of the living as well, when we see a mixture of those bad forces intent on conquering those with truly good intentions."

"Yes, our world has good and evil."

Valeria was reflecting on the truly evil events of the young girl, Emily, in Santa Fe killed by the dogs. And the deadly rattlesnake that could have bitten her in her own home. How those events were both in real life and presented to her in dreams. The dark nature of them in reality had to be the evil side of this polarity that too often makes life tragic. She could not believe that her own great grandmother would have wished that horrible death on the young Emily, or intended the snake she might have been bitten by was orchestrated solely by Luciana's powers. To Valeria it had to be the attempt of those darker forces that dwell in the same nebulous realm with the good that hijacked the opportunity to work it's evil upon the living.

"Let's just hope Natalia is not growing into that darker, evil side of that world you are studying,"

"I truly don't feel in this case, your daughter's powers are being shaped so destructively to harm or otherwise curse others. Her energy, though appearing dark has only been to shed light where there is darkness. I'm sure she is on the good side of that world. Just trying to steer those energies into the light"