The Andre Chronicles, by Psychic Su Walker
Chapter 5: Healing, Ghost-busting & Fat Bastard

Over the next week or two, Andre and I were able to talk at least a little every day. Some of the conversations I could barely coax half a dozen words out of him. Others he would chat away for hours.

Then, I began dealing with mild chronic pain in one of my elbows. The next time we were together, he noticed that I was rubbing it reflexively. “What’s wrong with your elbow?” he asked. “Oh, nothing much. It hurts some. I don’t know what I did, but it’s been painful on and off for a month or more,” I replied.

True to form, Andre motioned with his fingers for me to come hither. It was an unspoken let me see. I shrugged and sat down next to him. Andre felt the elbow for a moment and then closed his eyes, one hand on the outside of the joint, the other on the top of the forearm. Instantly, an incredible heat emitted from his palms and fingers and seeped into me. My elbow began to throb, and then pulse, as if in sync with his heartbeat. The heat increased, and I felt a strange electrical charge run down to my fingertips and up to my shoulder. I tried hard not to jerk my arm away, but the charge had a sort of bite to it that made it uncomfortable at first. Then, just as suddenly, the sharpness shifted, and a gentle warm current replaced it and flowed under his hands for more than a minute.

I lost track of time about then. The healing flow was intoxicating and it shifted me into a charismatic sort of trance. I inhaled deeply, relaxing and basking in the glow of Andre’s therapeutic touch. I didn’t realize I had slipped into the stream until he released me. When he took his hands off my arm, suddenly I popped back into full consciousness and was aware I’d indeed gone someplace else. Can’t say that I’m sure even now where that was, but when I emerged again into the waking world, my elbow no longer hurt. Two months of pain had been erased in a few minutes.

“How long was I drifting?” I asked. Andre didn’t seem at all surprised that I tranced out. “Couple of minutes,” was all he said. I worked the elbow joint a few times, feeling the warmth and tingle gently fade away. “Hey, it doesn’t hurt. Thank you!” I told him. “No problem,” was all he replied. I continued to try out the joint as if it were a new toy and asked, “Do you do much healing work?” Andre shrugged. “Not much.” He’s sure the master of the short reply, I thought and nodded, reloading my next set of questions. “You’re good. Thanks again. Can you do healing work on yourself too?” We were sitting in my small screen gazebo in the back yard and I think Andre was starting to understand that I ask a lot of questions. He had been pretty patient with me thus far, but often I could tell I exasperated him with the constant barrage. “Sometimes,” was his unelaborated reply. I let the one word sentence hang in mid air a moment to see if there would be any more from him before I launched another volley. Much of the time I found Andre very shielded. But I was learning to understand his communication style a little more, and was determined to be patient. After all, I was his padawan learner.

It was only a few moments later when I heard the phone ringing in the house. I excused myself and crossed the few steps to the breezeway door and reached inside to grab the portable. It turned out to be one of the most unusual calls I took that summer. Afterwards, I returned to Andre.

“There’s a problem,” I said. “That was my student Elizabeth.”

Andre nodded. He met my students briefly when we were doing energy work at over the Fourth of July weekend and remembered Elizabeth as the “quiet, petite Southern blond.” “Elizabeth just moved into a new place. It’s a hundred year old house about ten miles west of here.” I took a breath. “There’s a problem,” I repeated. “What sort of problem?” was his taciturn reply.

“Well, it seems that Elizabeth believes there’s a really dark spiritual energy in the basement. She tried to get rid of it by herself, and that didn’t work. She even brought my other students over to try to smudge the place, and that didn’t help at all.” I laughed lightly. “Apparently they burned up an entire stick of sage, cedar and sweet grass in the old coal room in less than two minutes.” “Elizabeth wants me to come over to check it out and see if I can do anything to get rid of it…or actually them. She thinks there’s something stuck in the coal bin room and something else in the basement that’s more of an angry, hurtful evil. There may possibly be another ghost upstairs because she says something keeps waking her up during the night. It’s so frightening for the family that she’s got the stairs to the cellar blocked off so her kids won’t go down there. She was pretty freaked when she called, and Elizabeth doesn’t scare easily.”

I looked over at Andre. I had some previous experience with “ghost busting” but wasn’t sure if he’d ever touched on or dealt with anything like this. “I told her I would be right over to see what I could do. Do you have any experience with stuff like this?” I asked. His chin rose and for a split second the warrior surfaced. He looked at me coolly. “A little,” he responded.

As I was to learn later, Andre is also the master of understatement.

The trip west took us less than fifteen minutes. When we arrived, Elizabeth opened the door looking pale and exhausted. She smiled a tired looking welcome. “Y’all come on in. I haven’t been sleeping well,” she told us. “This damn thing keeps coming into my room during the night.” She led us through the living room to the kitchen and showed Andre and I the basement door. It was well blocked off by two large heavy storage tubs stacked one on top of the other. “I didn’t want the kids going down here, it’s too creepy,” she explained through tired red eyes.

Andre wasn’t the only one to understate things. Creepy turned out to be a mild descriptor of what we were walking into.

I helped her move the hefty totes aside, carefully opened the door and peered down the century old stairway. Even at the top of the steps, the heaviness and foreboding of the home’s lowest level was extremely apparent. A cold evil wafted up from below and Elizabeth shivered. “I hate going down there,” she said. “Is there a light?” I asked. Elizabeth nodded. “At the bottom of the stairs, to the right is a pull chain. There’s an old coal storage room behind the stairs that…” she shuddered, “that I cain’t even approach. Something’s definitely there.”

I looked over at Andre. He peered down the open wooden steps. I saw his eyes narrow and caught the quick intake of breath. While I didn’t exactly hear it with my ears, in my being I perceived a deep-throated growl come from him. He was shifting into battle mode, like an alpha predator catching the scent of prey. “Let me,” was all he said and I moved aside to allow him to descend the stairs first. “Shut the door behind us,” I told Elizabeth. The basement was old smelling, musty, earthy and dark. In the partial light, I saw moving boxes and evidence that Elizabeth and her children had not been in the home very long. As I followed Andre down into the bowels of the house I was glad for the growing feeling I was behind an experienced warrior. When we reached the bottom, I turned and was hit full in the face by something old and evil. It was hateful and angry and not at all happy we were here. My own senses went on high alert.

Andre reached out into the darkness and a moment later a single naked bulb lit the basement. I heard the door click shut above us and swallowed hard. Elizabeth was right; there was at least one presence here if not more than one. I looked through the worn wooden steps and saw a heavy oak door that was partially open. I moved in the direction of what I figured must be the old coal room. Within three feet of the door I suddenly stopped in my tracks as an incredible feeling of desperation and fear wafted from the old storage room. It felt young, raw, and like a little girl who was totally scared to death. I turned, to say something to him, but before I could, my eyes were immediately drawn to a spot in the center of the house’s main support beam. My hands went to my throat and for a moment, I had difficulty breathing.

“Oh Goddess!” I let escape. My psychic senses told me that a rope had once hung there with a young man dangling. An image immediately burned itself into my mind, a re-creation of an event from decades before. Andre ignored me and was already busy. As I tore my focus from the beam and moved back his way, I saw he had his eyes closed and was finishing turning a three hundred sixty degree circle, his palms out and open, away from his body. His breathing was deliberate and controlled, and I could almost hear his nostrils flare as the predator caught the scent of prey. Again came the psychic growl from deep within him. “I think there’s a child or something young in the coal room,” I began. “I know,” he replied. “And my eyes keep going to…” I pointed to the ceiling. His eyes followed my finger and narrowed sharply as he fixed on the ancient, thick oak beam that held the weight of the house. They swept around the basement again, and locked onto something invisible lurking in the shadows of the room’s far corner. A chill went through me and I realized suddenly how much colder that part of the room felt. Without taking his eyes off of whatever it was, Andre spoke.

“You need to leave now,” he instructed.

I blinked. Elizabeth had called me for help, and now Andre was ushering me out of the room? I opened and closed my mouth, and then intuitively heard his voice in a clear commanding tone in my mind. "You’re in over your head; I’ll handle this alone." I looked instinctively over at the basement’s dark corner. It seemed to be writhing with an evil, dark hatred. This was NOT your average house ghost. It’s not usually my nature to defer such things to a man, or anyone else for that matter, but the telepathic words from Andre psychically rang so true I didn’t even bother to object. “Just don’t hurt the child,” I said. “I’ll help from upstairs.”

Andre did not reply but had assumed a battle ready stance, facing the dark corner. He didn’t speak again, didn’t turn, and didn’t take his eyes from the coldness there. I climbed the ten steps upward again and automatically understood that it would be best to close the basement door. In words I imagined Elizabeth might use, a whole can of whoop ass was about ready to be unleashed downstairs. I motioned Elizabeth to sit with me on the living room sofa and psychically I reached into the lowest level of the house to watch Andre work. Before I could fully connect with whatever he was doing, a small supernova psychically went off in my head. My eyes flew open, and I fully expected to see the dining room chandelier swinging from side to side. It was totally still. I looked over at Elizabeth to see if I was the only one to perceive the huge energy shift that had just run through the house. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and she was breathing heavily. Nope, I’m not the only one, I thought. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “Andre’s good.” I knew then I didn’t need to watch and make sure Andre was all right. Instead, I concentrated on doing a psychic sweep of the remainder of the house. That’s when I noticed we had attracted the attention of an entity that Elizabeth and I immediately dubbed “Fat Bastard.”

As I sat quietly on the sofa with Elizabeth, the spirit of a man faded into the corner of the dining room and approached us from the left. The ghost stood about five foot six, balding, had a sizeable beer belly and an abusive disposition. When he moved to within six feet from of us my own shields spontaneously came up to full power. I growled in his direction and mentally ordered, ‘Stay where you are!’ Its possible I surprised him because a moment later he dissipated. Elizabeth was shaking. She had caught the presence too. “He’s not gone,” she said. “He’ll be back. That fat bastard is the one who keeps waking me up all night long!”

A creak on the stairs and the turning of the basement doorknob heralded Andre’s emergence from the basement. “It’s taken care of,” he said quietly. “How?” I asked, curious. “What did you do?” “It’s taken care of,” he repeated, purposefully cryptic.

Damn it man, I thought. I want more info than that! As creepy as the lowest level was, I had check it out for myself. How did he take care of the two disparate spirits downstairs so fast? This was not lightweight stuff! I motioned for Elizabeth to follow and literally took her hand as we descended the old wooden steps together. The basement space felt clean, as if newly swept and scrubbed. I moved behind the stairs and for the first time was able to both approach the old coal room, and step inside it. No fear, no desperate feelings of a frightened girl-child remained. Elizabeth followed me into the room and I heard her breath an audible sigh of relief.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to stay in here for more than a second,” she said. “The child ain’t here anymore.” I agreed. We left the coal room and toured every corner of the basement. The cold corner now had the same clean, clear feel as the rest of the room. I scanned the beam where I had sensed the young man hanging from a rope but no longer felt the previous extreme anger and hatred. Only the stones that made up the century old walls seemed to still hold a residue of the evil that had remained down here for so long. It was as if the hatred and fear had become part of the molecular structure of the granite. I shook my head. This would not do. I motioned Elizabeth to follow me up the stairs again. Andre was waiting for us at the top. “So?” he queried. “Two things,” I said. “First, is there anything you can do about the memory in the foundation walls themselves? They seem to be holding onto the psychic imprint of whatever was down there for so long.” “That,” he replied thoughtfully, “will take a little more work.” “Second, upstairs here is another entity….” “Fat, balding guy, beer gut, nasty to kids, drank too much?” Andre replied. As if on cue, Elizabeth’s eyebrows and mine shot up together. Damn! I thought. He does have experience in this sort of stuff! “That’s him,” I confirmed, impressed with the details he had picked up without a word from either Elizabeth or myself.

“Stay here,” Andre instructed. A moment later, he shut the basement door behind him and Elizabeth and I heard his steps echo down the old, wooden stairs. It didn’t take long for us to perceive a second, more powerful psychic blast shake the house. Footsteps again heralded his return, and a moment later he emerged. Save for a bit of fine dust on his black shirt, he seemed none the worse for wear. “What about ‘Fat Bastard?’” I asked, glancing over at Andre who raised his eyebrows in a query. “The balding guy with the beer belly…we gave him a name,” Elizabeth confessed. I swear those dark eyes flashed red, and in his warrior voice came our instructions.

“You and Elizabeth go downstairs to make sure everything feels right,” he said. “Don’t come up for a couple of minutes.” It was not a request. I nodded, already sensing what was to come. “Get him good,” was the only thing I said.

Andre nodded and inside my head I heard the word vanquish come from him. He already had plans for “Fat Bastard.”

Elizabeth and I followed orders and again descended into the basement realm. The room and the century old stone walls were energetically clean, smooth and as silky feeling like a baby’s bottom. While I didn’t perceive the same supernova blast feel, psychically I could tell that Andre was busy upstairs. I steered Elizabeth to the coal room to show her how much better it felt. I was buying time; giving him whatever space he needed to work. We didn’t have to wait long. A minute and a half later, the basement door opened and we climbed once more into the late summer daylight.

“So?” I asked. I was learning that the same one-word sentences Andre used worked pretty well on him. “Problem solved,” he replied. “And the spirit of the child in the coal room? You didn’t hurt or scare her, did you?” Andre turned and the warrior persona visually gentled. Inside, I aware of a deeper, more loving nature of this man, one who went out of his way to not harm, but help innocents. I was suddenly chagrined that I had even asked if he had hurt the little ghost girl. “Let’s just say,” he responded, “That I took her on a fun little ride through the galaxy before I sent her off into the light. She was smiling when she left.” I smiled then too, visualizing Andre connecting exactly the way he described with this little spirit child who had been trapped for who knew how long in the coal room. He had approached her gently, calmed her, picked her up in a father’s embrace and then taken her on the most wondrous ride through space, whizzing past beautiful star systems and delicately colored nebula. “Thank you,” I told him sincerely. “Thank you.” He nodded, first to me, then to Elizabeth, and fished in his pocket as he headed out to the front porch for a smoke. She and I followed, and Elizabeth pulled out her pack of smokes as well. Andre instinctively reached over and lit her cigarette for her. She cocked her head and smiled at the well-mannered gesture.

“What about ‘Fat Bastard,’” I asked again. “What did you do with him?”

Those dark eyes turned toward me and the gentleness was gone, replaced by the efficient duty-bound feel of someone who had done this sort of clearing out the spiritual riff raff work for a very, very long time. “I told you, problem solved. That’s all you need to know.” His voice didn’t leave room for discussion. Elizabeth smiled almost gleefully, sensing an oncoming exchange. She knew me too well and licked her lips reflexively, waiting with a kind of baited breath for my response. Oh my! I psychically heard from her. This should be good! She watched as I pressed Andre. “Details, man! I want details!” I grinned, knowing that there was more to this. I wasn’t about to let him get away that easily.

“Let’s just say that I destroyed him,” he responded, purposely not elaborating. “I sent his pieces to a place that he won’t be coming back from.” VANQUISHED. I heard Andre’s voice in my head very, very clearly. I blinked and the hairs on the nape of my neck stood up.

He’s not kidding, I thought. Elizabeth suddenly stood very still. I too drew in a careful breath. How…? Who…? What…? A thousand unformed questions blurred past my mind.

Who or what was this man?!