As I stood there beside the house trying to process what I had just stumbled into, I looked down at the cracked cement beneath my feet. There was an ant making its slow progress across the sidewalk, bearing a burden. I squatted down, having nothing better to do with myself than look at the ant and the beetle it was carrying. It reminded me sharply of speaking with my future self and watching the bullet. Was this a coincidence? Was I seeing a warning? I shook my head. Perhaps it was possible to read too much into things.

I waited there. I watched the ants. I did not want to go back in. I thought about going back and getting in the car. If not for the previous day's experience, I'm pretty sure I would have. If not for being shot in the face, I think watching a woman decapitate a chicken with her teeth would have been the weirdest thing I've ever seen. As things stood, it wasn't. I sighed. Of course, Cece would know this sort of person.

I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if this was a cult, or witchcraft, or supernatural, or just a show that people paid money for. I'm twelve. I'm not stupid, but I have no idea what I walked into. After an interminable amount of time, the woman who had been on the floor came out and walked down the path. She seemed like a normal person. She gave me a warm smile as she passed and continued on her way.

I could hear voices inside. Cece, and what I presumed to be the older woman who had brutalized the chicken.

After a little bit longer, Cece came out, first peeking her head around the door, then giving me a troubled look.

“What’s wrong, Freak?” She asked, walking up to me.

I didn’t qualify that. What was wrong… Cece had a majorly different world view than most people.

“What was that?” I asked, “Some sort of demonic ritual?”

“No,” Cece looked affronted, “That was a blessing.”

"That was a… what?" I said.

Cece nodded. "Yeah, that poor girl had suffered two miscarriages and needed the current pregnancy to take."

I shook my head. "You're kidding, right?"

Cece looked back at me, flat, serious. "No, not at all," she said. "I told you we needed an expert."

I couldn't argue that, but I still doubted the level of expertise that I was walking into here. I sighed. It probably wouldn't be worse than getting shot in the face. I may as well give this a chance.

"Okay," I said. And Cece and I stepped back into the kitchen.

As I stepped back into the kitchen, the visuals of the room assailing my senses, the old woman was tidying up, as placid and pleasant as any grandmother I had ever seen, happily sweeping up feathers and firecracker bits while humming to herself. I stood there, completely unsure of what to say, when luckily, the old woman saved me from the trouble.

"You do have something hanging around you, boy," she said. Her accent was strange. Now, I know I'm not the most worldly person, but I couldn't place it. If I had to guess, I would have guessed Jamaican; however, there were tones that were completely wrong for it actually being a Jamaican accent.

The old woman shook her head. "You almost broke the blessing that I was making."

"I'm sorry," I ventured. I didn’t know what else to say.

The woman, still not looking up at me from her cleaning, shook her head. "I'm going to have to give you more attention before I know what's going on."

Cece broke into the conversation at this point. "So, what he told me was true?" she asked.

The old woman did look up at this point, her sharp eyes pinning Cece. "Girl, I don't know what he told you, and I don't know yet what's true. What I said is he does have something hanging around him, and I don't know what it is, but we'll get to the bottom of this. Believe me," she said, "we surely will."

***

Removed from the abrupt chaos that was apparently a blessing, I found I rather liked the old woman. She had a no-nonsense air about her, but she was kind in a way that I really appreciated. Her name was Jemima, and I now understood why Cece had hesitated to qualify anything about her. She served as the religious figure for the local community in more than one capacity.

She had continued to calmly go about cleaning up her kitchen, and I had offered to help, which she had turned down, telling me I needed to take myself and the aura I was carrying to the other room. She shooed me into her dining room and sat me down at her table where she had a plate of cookies. Of course, I helped myself.

Cece was not waiting with me at the table. She was in the kitchen, talking to Jemima about people and their lives. Cece was a regular part of all this. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from the table, but after a minute of hearing them, I’d grown bored and zoned out. Cece had inquired about some girl and a guy she wanted to be rid of. I cared little about who was in a relationship with whom, especially when I didn’t know them. The most interesting part was apparently Jemimia had given the girl porcupine quills for protection. The world was a weird place.

The room I was in was quite normal compared to the one I had come from. Yes, there were still more things on the walls than anyone whom I had met before would use to decorate with, but it didn't hold a candle to the kitchen.

The most interesting part was the series of photographs on the wall in front of me. Jemima, surrounded by what I guessed were family. There was a picture of her with two women who looked to be twenty or maybe thirty years younger than she was. They were dressed similarly, in their headdress, in the dress they wore, the way they carried it. I guessed they were her daughters.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Beside these two women were what I guessed were her daughters' children. There were five of them in total, two on the right, three on the left. They were all fully grown, and several of them had grown children standing next to them, with small kids of their own. Four generations in a photograph.

The thing that was interesting was being able to track my way across the wall and watch these people all age in reverse. The small children disappeared. The adults progressed backwards as the photographs got progressively older and older, the occupants getting younger and younger. Until at last, everyone in the photo I’d begun with disappeared, except Jemima.

Around that time, there was a man who appeared in the pictures beside Jemima. He was an interesting fellow, reminded me of a blues player I'd seen on the cover of an album once. In no picture did he appear without his hat, a tall feather sticking out of a band. This was not the sort of hat you typically saw. This was the kind of hat you would expect to find on an old Australian crocodile hunter or in a movie that was a period piece. I didn't know the name for this style, but the hat was obviously leather, wide-brimmed, kinda like a cowboy hat.

The man only wore a vest, no shirt. He never appeared with a shirt on. He had several necklaces and a very lean, hard look to him. He had on what— I couldn't tell because of the age of the photographs— looked like leather pants with a belt that had a very realistic-looking skull for a buckle. I was reminded of a dangerous character in a movie, but I couldn't put my finger on who. He stopped appearing in the photographs long before they were in color. Long before the children were very old. This made me sad for them, thinking of my own dad.

The peace of sitting in this room and studying the old photographs was a welcome reprieve from my previous day. Jemima had come in and checked on me once, asking if there was anything I needed and handing me a glass of ice water. I told her, "No, thank you." But after taking a sip of the water, I realized I was really very thirsty. I wasn't sure when the last time I had eaten or drunk anything was, but my body was telling me I needed it.

Eventually, Jemima came into the room with me and sat down at the table. She didn't say anything. So, after a little bit, I decided to fill the silence. I asked something that had been burning in my mind.

"Is that blessing you did really going to work?" I asked her. Unable to help myself, I blurted, "And those porcupine quills, will they help? I'm so confused. What do you do? Are you actually in communication with the spirit realm?"

Jemima studied me for a while, her eyes—the sharpest part of her old face, which was filled with wrinkles and years of lines— seemed to take in everything. After a while spent considering me, she answered, "That's a lot of questions for a little boy," she said. "But then again, you have an old soul."

I had heard people use this term before. I began to shake my head to state that I was simply precocious and possibly autistic, when she held up her hand.

"No, I see that you have an actual old soul. You have a young one as well. The old one is uninvited, but yours nonetheless. The young one belongs. And yes, it is full of many questions."

"To get back to your questions—which I believe are being fueled by both of your souls right now—yes, I am in contact with the spiritual. No, the porcupine quills will not work. The woman I gave them to does not believe. Without faith in a thing, a thing cannot work. Yes, the woman for whom I just performed the blessing will carry her child to term unless something comes and interferes with the blessing that I cast."

Before I could ask my next question, she continued, "It's because she believes in the thing, and so it has the power to help her." She studied me for a long moment. "I need to do a reading on you."

In this room, there was religious paraphernalia from all sorts of religions. I pointed over to them.

"Which one's real?" I asked her.

"Oh, they're all real. There are things behind each of them. I tell you though, some are much bigger than others," she said. "There are some that I don't touch."

She pointed over to a crucifix. "That one, for example, is too big for me. He wants me though. He keeps asking me to trust him. Some day I might, but I got to give up what I got to trust him, and that scares me." She pointed over to Buddha. "This one is friendly but not very helpful." She pointed over to something I was unfamiliar with. "I have authority here. This is what I use to protect people who mine. It not very nice, but I know how things work here. So I pay the price it asks of me.”

"But you're not really interested in God now, are you? You want to know what is real."

I nodded. I did want to know what was real.

"Well, many things are real—things you would not believe, but they are real in their own place. Here, they are not so real. About heaven, before you ask, I don't know. I have not been told, and I have not been to that side. What I do know is what I can reach and what I can touch. And so I will use what I can touch to help you."

This whole conversation was creating questions for me that I had previously not thought of. I had two souls? Both mine? At least I could rule out possession by an alien.

“You got to pay a price before I can read you,” Jemima said. “That the way it works for me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t have any money.”

“Not that kinda price, boy.”

“What then?”

“Your first born child.”

“What? Wow… really? What if I never have children? Do you get stiffed, or have to pay for it yourself? Seems costly for a reading.”

Jemima burst out laughing, “Don’t be so gullible, boy.” She continued to hoot and laugh.

“Yeah,” I said, scowling. “I’ve heard that before.”

“The price you got to pay is to give me your luck, for a time. You not going to like me if you do. But I can see you already have died twice, and yet, here you sit. So I think you can afford to give me your luck for a while.”

“So what, I’m going to lose at games of chance until my luck comes back?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that, but yes, you would lose a game of chance, unless you wanted to lose, or needed to. You have no idea what I’m asking of you, do you, boy?”

“Today has made me feel like I have no idea about anything,” I said, being honest. I shrugged, “Fine, ok. You can have my luck. Cece trusts you, and I trust her. How long will it take to come back?”

“Different for every person, boy. Hopefully, it won’t take long. Short answer is, I don’t know.”

"Okay," I said. "What do I do now?"

"That's easy," Jemima said. Quick as a snake, she reached across the table and stuck me with a pin.

"Ow!" I said, trying to pull my hand back. She was the fastest old lady I'd ever seen. Before I pulled my hand away, she had her bony hand around mine, stronger than you would believe. She took my thumb, which she had jabbed with the needle, and pressed it against a gold coin.

Looking closer, I realized the coin was probably not gold. It was brass or something. I don't know. It had weird symbols on it. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. It looked old, ancient, antique. Actually, it reminded me of Jemima. And then, quick as a wink, she let go of me and put the coin in her pocket.

I blinked at her. The thumb pricking wasn't bad. She had squeezed out a drop of blood onto the coin and then let me go.

Resisting the urge to suck my thumb after having had it pressed to a coin, I put my hand in my lap. Partially to make sure it was out of reach. I felt strange. It was like some part of me that had been confident was now less so, diminished.

"Now what?" I asked, looking across the table at her.

She looked at me. When I say looked, I'm not sure anyone had ever seen me like she was looking at me now. She looked deeper.

"Now, I read you," she said. The way she was looking at me, I wondered if there were words appearing on my forehead.

"Don't you need tarot cards or bones or dice or something?" I asked.

She shook her head. "That's not how my gift works," she said. "Mmm, now I see why you got two souls. One is broken," she said, "and one is not, but they are the same soul. You can't have two souls…” she looked at me for another moment, her eyes moving like she was reading, “Mmm-hmm, now it makes sense why you have died. It's going to keep snapping you back until things are in alignment."

"In alignment," I said.

"Uh-huh." She narrowed her eyes at me. "That's also why you more open now," she said.

"What?" I asked, not sure what she meant.

"Having a broken soul opens your mind. You been experiencing things outside the norm? Maybe seeing things other people can't?"

I looked at her. No, I had not experienced seeing things other people couldn't. But being able to slow time, or at least my perception of it, was well outside the norm.

Jemima nodded. "Yeah, you know what I mean. I can see it. Well, it's going to continue. But you've got to try and reconcile that broken soul, the old one that you've got inside you. I think if it weren't broken... It would have taken over, crushed the one you got now. But since it's broken, it can't do that."

"Crush my soul," I said. "You mean future me would have taken me over if he wasn't broken?"

Jemima nodded. "I expect so. That's some powerful stuff, for him to come back like that. I don't know how he did it. But you," she pointed at me, "you got a fight ahead of you if you want to stay you. That thing haunting you, your future self as you call it, oh, it's going to try to take everything."

Feeling lost, I asked her, "How do I fight back?"

"You got to want it more, boy. When he tries to take from you, you got to hold on. Harder than he can. You will have to outlast him. He got no way to renew himself now, but he older, so it not going to be easy.”

She leaned back in her chair, still looking at me, but not as intent. “You will talk to him as your soul and his get closer. He’s got to kill you to live again. I expect, he will try to trick you. Take what he tells you, and weigh it careful like. You come see me again when you feel that you can’t go on. Because you will. When life forces you to kill or be killed, good people often choose to die, because they good. But the thing riding you boy, it’s evil. Your job, if you want to take care of the people in your life, is to beat that evil. Do not let it win.”

She fell silent after that. Letting it linger. I felt dizzy. I put my head in my hands. My future self was evil? I’d come back to take over my past? Why? I had more questions now than right after being shot. I couldn’t make a single one of them into a cohesive sentence. I sat that way until Cece came back. She and Jemima spoke and then Cece took me to the car. Feeling numb, I let her guide me, without really seeing anything.

***