Read Online Medusa by Timothy C. Phillips - Free Book Online Page B

had come to a halt in front of a small house, and was preparing to turn and make my way back to the hotel, when I realized that I was standing next to a sign. I backed up and read the loopy Gothic calligraphy that proclaimed: Palmistry by Sister Ludivine. Your Destiny is in your Hands.  
    Realizing that the jazz quartet had put me in a metaphysical sort of mood, I felt drawn to the little house. I smiled to myself, walked slowly up the steps, and tried the knob. The door opened, and tiny chimes signaled my entry. I stepped into the tight enclosure of a dark, little room. There was a woman sitting there, and like so many of the women I had seen in this part of Louisiana, she was striking. Her forbearers had clearly hailed from the Mediterranean. Her hair was glossy black, her skin deep olive. Her eyes had piercing black irises, set beneath arched eyebrows. She spoke with the accent of Southwestern Louisiana, the distinctive sounds of a Cajun French accent rolling sensuously forth from her as she lifted her gaze to me and purred, “You come in search of something. It’s so very close by, but you don’t find it.”  
    I nodded and looked around. The walls were covered with strange paintings: a group of women meeting with a cloaked figure in a dark forest; a picture of the world from outer space, filtered in strange colors, so that the sea was pink and the land a deep purple; a naked woman, standing, superimposed over a great five-pointed star; a huge snake twined up around the woman’s body, his tail was between her legs, and her head was turned, so that she and the snake were turned toward each other, their faces close together, peering into each other’s eyes. The snake’s tongue was licking out, toward the woman’s lips. The woman’s face held no expression.
    “Who are you?” Was all that I could think of to say to the woman seated behind the table.  
    “Sit down, child, and let Ludivine see your hand,” she said by way of introduction.  
    I stood for a second longer, and then sat. Whatever strange machines were at work, I thought, best not to gum up their works. Let them run on.  
    “I’m sure glad Tiller’s not here,” I muttered.  
    “Tiller, your friend, he’s not a believer?” The woman called Ludivine asked me with an arched eyebrow.  
    “I don’t think so, not really,” I said with a smile.  
    Across the table, Ludivine smiled. “That’s all right. Sooner or later, we all believe. Now, please . . . your hand.”  
    I shrugged and sat down across from the woman. “Why not.”  
    Ludivine looked at my palm and leaned her head back. I felt a shudder run through her, and my own body responded with a shudder of its own.  
    “You see the evil in the world. You are a strong one. You bear the scars of evil ones, but you are a good man. You don’t let the evil become part of you.”  
    Ludivine nodded at her own assertion and her head came forward again, so that she was looking into my eyes. Her eyes were black pieces of anthracite, unreadable.  
    “You look for something that cannot be found. One lost little thing that will come back to you, one and another that does not. The man you find in the wasteland, you will find again by the water. There your fates will part, and the question between you will be decided. There, you will grapple with your enemy one last time.”  
    I felt the hackles rise on the back of my neck. Across the table, the woman was serene, staring at me with her shining black eyes. I didn’t know what to say, or even to think. Her words were as uncanny as the tiny room in which we sat.  
    “Can you tell what I do?”  
    “You try to right the wrongs of the world.”  
    I longed to ask her a question that played on my mind in the wee small hours of the morning; whether a girl that I had seen in the desert a few years before was alive, dead, or a messenger from the Great Beyond, or maybe just a figment of my imagination, the product of a battered and exhausted