Shaman, Healer, Heretic (Olivia Lawson Techno-Shaman) Read online

  “Last Rights,” whispered SK, as he resumed the climb.

  “Oh,” said Livvy, as she looked up at SK’s back and then over his head to the exit sign above them.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d arrived after the Last Rights had been given and, like the other times, it sobered her. But it didn’t frighten her. In fact, it had the opposite effect. It was a challenge. She took the steps two at a time to catch up with SK.

  “So, what do we have?” she asked, as they emerged into the corridor on the third floor. SK took another breather.

  A small clump of people had gathered in front of an open door about a third of the way down. Almost as one, they turned to look at her and SK. They recognized him but eyed her warily.

  “It looks like soul loss to me,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the pocket handkerchief. “Probably.”

  She looked down at him.

  “Probably?”

  “Yes, well,” he said, folding the handkerchief and putting it back. “That’s why I called you. I had somebody else here earlier today, when I thought it’d be something standard.”

  “Oh, really,” she said, as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And when were you going to let me know that little tidbit?”

  “Right now,” he said, starting down the hall.

  “Thanks.”

  Livvy knew that the rules of shaman culture dictated that shamans be kept separate but she disliked it. For centuries, villagers had both feared and coveted shamanic power. The prospect of one shaman was frightening but two shamans working together was terrifying. Even in L.A., where shaman turfs were packed in tight, SK was careful to keep their activities separate and their knowledge of each other to a minimum.

  When she and SK reached the small group, the onlookers parted to make way. As they passed, one woman clucked as though the second string had arrived. Livvy heard whispers behind her in Spanish, which she understood of course. Bruja blanca, they said, “white witch,” and demasiado joven, “too young.” It was easy to ignore them. She was used to much worse.

  The tiny apartment was crammed with people. Every chair was full and almost every space on the floor. An ancient woman in the middle of the tattered couch glared at her over clasped hands that held a rosary. Conversations hushed. A cute boy, sitting on the floor against the wall with his earphones plugged in, perked up and tried to make eye contact. A middle-aged woman on her cell phone snapped it shut to cut off her call. A young couple on the couch were holding hands and Livvy’s gaze lingered on their interlocked fingers. She smiled at them but they looked away.

  A wave of quiet seemed to follow as they made their way past the kitchen. One of the men eating at the table put down his fork and made the sign of the horns at her. He followed her with it, warding off the evil eye, until one of the women who had been cooking at the stove slapped him on the back of the head. He looked back down at his plate.

  They had probably all heard that another shaman had been there and had failed. Interest was high. In the short hallway, people stood on both sides, pressed up against the walls to let them pass. As they went by the first bedroom, Livvy saw a bunk bed, small furniture, and a few toys scattered over the threadbare shag carpet. One of the women next to the doorway side-stepped in front of it to cut off her view, even though Livvy could see right over her.

  Finally, they arrived at the patient’s bedroom. Livvy knew it because she could hear children crying, like she had on the phone. SK pushed past the crowd at the doorway and she followed.

  Tin foil had been taped over the window and the room was dark, lit only by candles, giving it the waxy smell that Livvy associated with churches. Incense was burning too, but not as an offering. The patient was probably wearing a diaper. The incense was an attempt to hide the smell of human waste, but it wasn’t quite working. Once past the doorway, the bedroom was less crowded than anywhere else in the apartment.

  At last Livvy saw the patient, who was not a child but an adult, a woman who looked to be in her early thirties. She lay in the bed unconscious, oblivious to the world.

  A woman sat in a folding chair, with an infant girl on her lap who was sucking on a teether. Another child, who seemed to be about three, was on the bed with the patient. She tugged on the woman’s hand.

  “Mama,” she implored, “please.”

  But Mama wasn’t moving and her sunken eyes remained shut.

  SK and Livvy approached the bed. A woman followed them into the room, quickly passing them, and picked up the little girl. Already red-faced and teary, she wailed, clutching at her mother as she was lifted away. As if on cue, the infant spit out its teether and started to cry in sympathy. The woman with the infant stood up and went to the doorway, passing the baby off to a man who seemed to be waiting for her. Livvy noticed that both of the children wore a red ribbon tied around their ankles to ward off the evil eye. As the woman with the older girl moved past, the child quieted and reached out to Livvy. Startled, the woman paused.

  Sniffling, the little girl held out her arms to Livvy in the universal hold-me gesture and leaned toward her. The woman holding her looked at the unconscious woman on the bed as if for permission and then at the man in the doorway, who shrugged. Out of habit, Livvy quickly touched the edge of the bedspread, discharging a small spark of static electricity.

  In moments, the child was in Livvy’s arms and staring up into her face. The little girl reached up and touched her white hair and then focused on the amethyst pendant Livvy wore. As the child reached for it, the woman who had been holding her intercepted the tiny hand before it could grab the purple crystal. Livvy smiled down at the confused little face that beamed back at her. The girl immediately laid her head on Livvy’s shoulder, her small hands holding tightly. Livvy gently patted the tiny warm back.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Mama’s gonna be all right.”

  “We need to get to work,” said SK. He waited a few moments and then turned to the woman next to Livvy. “Could you take Anita’s daughter outside please?”

  As expected, the little girl cried and gripped Livvy’s jacket with her fists, but she was no match for the woman. As they left, Livvy gave the girl a sympathetic smile and a little wave. They were quickly out the door and the wailing receded into the living room.

  Livvy looked down at the patient, whose skin was a waxy yellow. She thumbed one of her eyelids open and checked pupil reaction. Her brain was still functioning on some level and her eyes had not rolled back. She put two fingers to the woman’s wrist and rested a hand on her chest. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse quick. Livvy laid the back of her hand on the woman’s brow and it was hot, as expected. The patient had probably not been able to drink enough water, if anything at all, and was dehydrated.

  The woman who had carried the little girl away had reappeared in the room and taken a seat in the chair again, like a sentinel.

  “This is Anita’s sister, Dolores. She’s the one who called me,” said SK.

  Livvy looked over at her, across the bed.

  “When did her illness begin?” Livvy asked in Spanish.

  Dolores groaned.

  “Like I told the other curandera, and the nurses at the emergency room, and the doctors, she told me she wasn’t feeling good about a month ago. It started in her back.”

  She reached around behind herself and touched her lower back to make it clear.

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “The doctors? Nothing,” Dolores said with disgust.

  Livvy nodded. It was the usual story. The doctors glided in and out and it was usually left to the nurses to deal with the patients, from translating the medical jargon to imparting bad news. It seemed like ages ago when Livvy had thought she would be a doctor, specializing in pediatrics. That was a different life.

  “What did the nurses tell you to do?”

  “They told me to make her comfortable,” she said, her voice quavering and her eyes filling with tears. “It was the
only thing left.”

  Livvy felt in the pocket of her jacket for the wad of tissues she knew would be there. She peeled one off and handed it to Dolores, who blew her nose. Livvy gently rubbed the poor woman’s back between her shoulders. She could see that Dolores was exhausted, sitting vigil here, watching her sister die.

  “Do you think there’s anybody who would wish her ill?” Livvy finally asked.

  “What do you mean, like an evil spell?”

  The people in the doorway shifted their feet and looked at each other.

  “Yes, like an evil spell.”

  Dolores glanced at the crowd, then back to her sister, then back at the crowd.

  “Well, I don’t know...”

  “Tell them about Miguel,” said the young girl who had come to fetch them. She stepped into the room.

  Livvy looked from the girl back to Dolores, waiting. Dolores looked at her sister’s face and then at the floor.

  “If I’m going to help your sister, I need to know everything,” Livvy said, patiently but firmly.

  “Miguel is the father of the children,” said the teenage girl. “But he won’t give any money. Says he doesn’t have it but I seen him at the club. Anita kept asking him for money and the last time he was here she said he couldn’t come see the kids no more. It was a really big fight. We all heard it.” She gestured in back of her and one of the women in the hallway nodded. “It was right after that she started to feel bad.”

  “She wouldn’t want you to hurt the children’s father,” interrupted Dolores.

  Livvy crouched down at Dolores’ side and put a hand lightly on her knee.

  “I’m not going to hurt anybody,” she said quietly and offered a small smile. “I’m here to help.”

  Dolores nodded and held the tissue to her nose. Livvy turned to SK.

  “Let’s get started,” she said.

  As she took off her shoulder bag, she whispered to him under her breath in English, “Who dropped the ball on the family history? Didn’t anybody ask questions?”

  SK replied in Spanish, loud enough for everybody to hear, “That’s your job.” Then in English, much more quietly he said, “Don’t ever question what I or other shamans do in front of the client.”

  Livvy frowned but silently unlatched the yoga mat from under her shoulder bag. She hadn’t meant her questions as a challenge. She knew better than to trade words with SK, especially right now. There was a lot more at stake than something another shaman missed.

  SK watched in silence as she unrolled her mat.

  “Do you want the room cleared?” he asked.

  “Either way is fine for me,” she said, flattening the mat. “I’ll be on the flip side in a minute.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ONLY TEN YEARS ago, a shaman had to get high. Drugs were the multiverse gateway of choice, the typical means by which shamans entered a different plane of existence. Proponents of the old school preferred peyote, mescaline, and datura; for the new school, LSD and ecstasy. Of course, drugs had their own world of worries. The danger of taking too much was ever present as shamans attempted to balance on the edge of the void without falling in. Typically, more experienced practitioners would mentor initiates, ostensibly to help guide the vision quest but really to prevent overdoses.

  Even when a shaman survived the transition and made it back, there were always the side effects: nausea, headaches, lingering auras in sunlight. Recovery time was mandatory, both physical and mental. In essence, business was closed for at least a couple of days.

  Livvy reached into her bag and removed her goggles along with a new pack of batteries. Except for a few strips of grey duct tape, the goggles were a shiny black plastic. Although they seemed at first glance like they might be large, wrap-around sunglasses, the smooth bulging curve at the front of the goggles contained tiny projectors and mirrors that threw images back at the eyes of the wearer.

  “Got your knife?” she asked SK, tossing him the battery pack.

  If a shaman didn’t want to use drugs, there were other equally demanding routes: fasting, drumming, dancing, chanting and anything else that could lead to exhaustion. It was time consuming to get to the ecstatic state and few urban shamans had that luxury. Clients wanted their results in the next five minutes or they’d be on to a new shaman who did use drugs.

  Livvy popped out the old batteries as SK sliced open the plastic on the new. He handed them back to her as she sat down on the mat next to the bed.

  The big breakthrough for techno-shamans had been the God Helmet. It had started as an experiment to see if an electromagnetic field could induce the impression of the presence of God, using a motorcycle helmet with big magnets built into it. A tiny electric current stimulated the magnets, which caused them to emit a magnetic field, and then the subject would report whether or not they could sense God. Although some people did indeed have a religious experience, possibly because some people always would, a large number of people reported feeling like somebody else was in the room with them.

  Livvy stashed the old batteries in her bag, plugged in the new ones and snapped on the power button. The goggles emitted a small electric humming sound. The people at the doorway stood on their tiptoes to look over the bed and see what was happening.

  Unrelated to the God Helmet, but shortly thereafter and equally important, the video gaming industry introduced 3-D goggles. The first shaman who had seen the potential of the two technologies being brought together had lived and worked in the Silicon Valley.

  Livvy took out a tiny pillow that was stuffed with wheat kernels and sage and placed it at the top of the mat. She started to lay back but stopped and looked over at SK.

  “Back in a bit,” she said.

  “I’ll be here,” he said, squatting down to sit cross-legged next to her.

  While she was on the other side, Livvy would have no awareness of her physical body or surroundings. In traditional societies, the role of protecting the shaman as they journeyed in the spiritual world would have fallen to an assistant. Today, in L.A., it fell to SK.

  Livvy felt the familiar mat beneath her and heard the crunch of the pillow as she settled in. As she raised the goggles up to her face, the video program was already playing. She closed her eyes and slipped them on. The soft rubber padding around the edge sat comfortably on her cheeks and temple and sealed out anything visual. Slowly, she lowered her hands to her sides and took in a deep breath, experiencing the cleansing smell of the sage. As she exhaled, she opened her eyes.

  For tens of thousands of years, shamans the world over had shared a visual set of cues, a group of symbols that marked the entrance to the multiverse. They had even recorded them on boulders, cliff faces, and the walls of deep caves. Despite the time and space that separated them, the images remained the same: spirals, checkerboards, dots, crisscrossing lines and sunbursts.

  Inside the goggles, Livvy watched as the red and yellow symbols bobbed and swayed against the deep black background. They seemed to flow into one another in a random order. Outside the door to the bedroom she heard feet shuffling and conversations in the kitchen and living room. The baby was crying again.

  Livvy unfocused her eyes and took another deep breath. As she watched, the spirals and sunbursts became more intense and the sound of the real world faded. Dots and criss-crossed lines morphed into one another. The cycling of the images became quicker. She moved toward them as they started to glow. Their edges became indistinct. As the cycling grew even faster, they started to become less opaque. As she approached, they grew larger and even more transparent, morphing into one another at a frenetic pace, blurring into a bright ball of orange. Beyond them, she saw a familiar landscape taking shape–the middleworld. She stepped through.

  “Is she there now?” asked Dolores, quietly.

  SK watched Livvy’s even breathing and saw her pulse rate drop at the jugular vein.

  “Yes, she’s there.”

  “What do we do now?” asked the girl at the door.

>   “We wait.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS ALWAYS high noon in the middleworld. The trees at the edge of the black lake cast their shadows directly down. As Livvy approached on the dirt path, it seemed unusually quiet. She stopped and listened. Not a cricket or bird sounded. There was no snapping of twigs in the forest to signal the approach of an animal spirit. She could clearly hear the wind as it rustled the branches and leaves–perhaps too clearly.

  As she looked to the sky, she saw the clouds gathering. Her spirit helper was approaching. She resumed her walk to the lake, but was aware of the eerie silence. Her footsteps sounded too loud on the gravel beach. As the sky grew suddenly dark, a clap of thunder sounded in the distance, over the peaks of the mountains that ringed the lake. A bright flash, muffled within the clouds above her, briefly lit her white hair with an aura. Her spirit helper, lightning, had arrived.

  She had seen the other spirit helpers in the middleworld and underworld, animals and insects of every variety, and they had seen her, but she had rarely communicated with them, which was not unusual. They weren’t there to guide or help her. They were simply watching.

  Again there was a clap of thunder.

  “All right, already,” she said, looking at the reflections of the clouds in the inky water. “I’m going, I’m going.”

  The entire sky was now filled with dark clouds. She walked to the edge of the water and took a step in, watching her foot disappear. The lake was particularly cold today.

  “Great,” she muttered, shivering.

  Rather than prolong the agony, she took another step and then another. Her shins splashed and sent small waves out in front of her. Soon she was waist deep, not bothering to keep her hands raised. In another few seconds only her head was above water and, as the ground beneath her feet dropped off, she submerged.

  Whirling eddies started to spin around her, creating a funnel into the darkness below, sucking her downward but then expelling her onto dry land. She braced for the impact, landed with a thud, and rolled to absorb the energy until she hit the curb.