A Ghost of a Chance Read online

  I stare at my nemesis, an image I have come to detest with the message he brings, since the resolution the card demands has always remained out of reach. This time, I’m not intimidated. “This is my new reality, sucker,” I tell the flipped man, who never flinches from his head-exploding position.

  Just then the door opens and a woman peeks out. “I don’t open until ten but you’re welcome to come in. I’m stocking inventory.”

  I have fifteen minutes to kill so why not. “Okay,” I tell the woman, who opens the door wide and flicks on an additional light that illuminates the many shelves of New Age miscellany. The store is filled with crystals and other stones, jewelry, books and witchy things like blankets sporting pentacles, altar kits and black capes. Of course, there are Tarot card decks and how to read them, plus other divination articles such as runes and numerology.

  “Cool store,” I mutter as I make my way through the maze, breathing in the sweet smells of sage, incense and something else, scented candles perhaps?

  “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” the owner asks. “Something to help you focus, maybe?”

  I turn and stare at this woman dressed in a long, flowing skirt and peasant top, hair a mass of frizz turning toward white, wondering how she picked up on my morning predicament. “What makes you say that?”

  She leaves her mound of boxes, slipping a stack of what appears to be political flyers beneath the counter, and emerges to where I’m standing, her hand outstretched. “I’m Cassiopeia and this is Rainbow Waters.”

  I shake her hand, which is warm and comforting, but my manners leave me once again. “Seriously, that’s your name?”

  “Well, we cater to lots of people here in Eureka. There’s a big Christian population who come for the Passion of the Christ performance in the summer, but a lot of gays visit here as well, plus they own a lot of the local shops. And, of course, there’s the Wicans who are attracted to the mountain because of its healing properties and other spiritual attributes. A rainbow seemed appropriate. And I don’t have to tell you what the waters refer to.”

  I meant her name, but I don’t interrupt. “Cool,” is all I manage.

  “Looking for something in particular?” She picks up a cloudy somewhat purple stone and one a brilliant lavender. “Lepidolite is a great stone for healing emotions,” she says holding the darker stone, “but if you want something for clarity and focus, I would suggest purple fluorite.”

  I’m attracted to the vibrant purple stone, but I can’t get past what the star lady said. “How did you know about my focus issues?”

  Her smile warms me like her handshake, genuine and kind, and I’m convinced she has looked inside my soul and deciphered every fault and attribute. “Just a hunch.”

  Suddenly, I’m tuned like a baby grand. “What’s the deal with ghosts in this town?”

  Cassiopeia casually leans back against the counter as if we’re discussing the weather and not dead people walking the streets of Eureka Springs. “It’s the geology. Some people believe more hauntings occur near strong magnetic fields and lots of time that’s around places where the ground shifts, the kind that produces electromagnetic energy but not hard shifting that produces earthquakes. Know what I mean?”

  Huh? “Not hardly.”

  “Cracks in the earth, near mountains like this one, can produce electric and magnetic fields when there is geological strain. You find this a lot with granite mountains, where quartz exists.”

  “So the ground is evolving and the pressure causes unusual fields and that attracts ghosts?” I hope I’m not sounding as clueless as I am.

  “It’s a theory,” Cassiopeia says. “The crystals help move the energy. Our bodies pulse energy, pouring out of us and producing our auras. Ghosts are believed to be energy imprints left on the earthly plane, or sometimes more intelligent energies who are able to communicate with us. You’re too young to remember this, but early radio sets used crystals because they vibrate at various frequencies.”

  I know this theory all too well.

  “Water is another conduit,” she adds.

  This stops me cold, reminding me of my repetitive dreams. “Water? Why?”

  “Water has many metaphysical properties. We’re comprised of mostly water as well as the earth. It’s the basis of all life. It transforms itself and reacts to vibrations. You can take a glass of water and transform its energies simply by speaking to it or labeling its container.”

  “Masaru Emoto.”

  Cassiopeia brightens. “Yes. Exactly.”

  Emoto was a Japanese doctor of alternative medicines who inflicted either positive or negative energy towards different containers of water. He then photographed the water crystals and found striking differences between the two. The water receiving positive energy — such as words of “thank you” or “love” in different languages — had complex, beautiful crystals when frozen and photographed. The water with the negative language had malformed crystals. I had read his book, The Hidden Messages in Water, and felt the pain lying within those distorted water crystals appearing like an abused child, plus learned more in the documentary on physics and the spiritual world, What the Bleep Do We Know.

  Emoto is convinced that our individual consciousness and that of the world’s consciousness collectively is deeply connected to water.

  “Fascinating guy and ground-breaking work,” I say.

  Cassiopeia nods enthusiastically. “Water is my favorite subject. It can be so healing. It’s what brought people to this town to begin with, the healing springs we take for granted and pollute.”

  “Water also destroys.” I speak before I think, something I tend to do. I didn’t mean to interrupt our positive conversation but Katrina is always lingering in the back of my mind these days.

  Cassiopeia gazes at me as if I gave her the final piece of a puzzle. I sense she knows me completely now, although I can’t explain why.

  “You know, maybe you should try blue apatite.” She heads to a corner of the store where a collection of blue rocks rest. “It stimulates psychic visions and clairvoyance, helps communicate with the other worlds.”

  Before I can answer that the last thing I want to do right now is to communicate with the dead anymore than necessary, the door swings open and the mayor stands gaping on the threshold. Once again, she’s attired in a stark business suit, her hair perfectly coifed and her face fully made up — too much so — with that trademark red lipstick.

  “I knew it,” she practically shouts at me. “I knew you were in league with my cousin.”

  This is getting ridiculous and I’m in no mood this morning to be yelled at by a woman who left nail marks on my upper arm. “Who the hell is your cousin?” I retort.

  Cassiopeia steps between us. “I am.”

  Chapter Eleven

  For a moment, no one speaks. We’re too busy shooting daggers at each other with our eyes. Except for New Age Goddess who quickly centers herself between the mayor and me and offers up a peaceful stance, her arms outstretched gracefully.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m sure we can talk this out.” Looking toward her “cousin,” Cassiopeia adds, “How do you two know each other?”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” the mayor retorts. “I know you are planting this woman in my group of travel writers so that something can happen.” She uses two fingers to emphasize quote marks on the word something. “I saw her last night asking questions about that girl.”

  “What girl?” Cassiopeia asks.

  “You know damn well who. The one you’re so convinced is related.”

  “What?” I turn to Ms. New Age and say without thinking, “You’re related to Lauralei?”

  The blood drains from Cassiopeia’s face and for a moment I know her secrets. At least I think I do. She arrows her eyes and studies me. “How do you know…?”

  “So now you’re going to tell me that you two have nothing up your sleeves?”

  The mayor continues her tirad
e about how I’m here to bring down progress and ruin her campaign, whatever that means, while Cassiopeia continues her questions, mainly how I came to know the name of the homely girl haunting my room. Blame it on the lack of sleep, not enough coffee or too many ghosts following me around, but I melt down. Bigtime. Hands in the air, I push toward the door, and practically yell, “I don’t know what’s going on with you two but I want out of here.”

  The mayor blocks my way at the door and reaches to grab my arm for the second time but I jerk back. “Oh no you don’t,” I bark. “Touch me again, woman, and I’m calling the cops. I happen to be friends with Madman Maddox.”

  I didn’t mean to use my nickname for the hunk, but I don’t work well under pressure.

  Unfortunately, the mayor does.

  “He works for me,” she says between gritted teeth. “Don’t you even think you’re getting away with this.”

  Suddenly I spot an angel lurking behind the mayor’s back, a thin PR girl holding two coffees in her hands watching this interaction with eyes as wide as saucers. God, for the life of me, why can’t I remember her name?

  “Great, you’re here,” I yell to the Wallace girl. “I’m on my way out.”

  The mayor turns and spots my savior and, after a moment’s pause, moves back so that I may exit the store. Just before I’m home free she whispers in my ear as I pass. “I’m watching you.”

  I try desperately for a witty comeback, something that would make Clint Eastwood proud, but all I manage is, “You too!”

  Skinny and I climb the stairs to Spring Street in silence, but once we turn the corner and cross over to the Basin Spring Park, she looks my way sheepishly and asks, “What the hell was that all about?”

  I stop at the entrance to the park, standing beneath an arch that reads “Balm of Life” because I can see Richard, my Wisconsin buddies and the historian waiting for us ahead. “What’s your name? I’m sorry but I can’t remember.”

  “Alicia.”

  “And please dear God is that coffee for me?”

  Alicia laughs, breaking the awful tension we carried with us from the shop. “Yes, one for you and one for Richard who’s been complaining ever since we left the Crescent Hotel.” She winces. “Oh, did I say that?”

  I grab a coffee, remove the plastic cover and inhale its scent, hoping that delicious aroma will bring me back to center. “Your secret’s safe with me, Alicia, and although mine really isn’t a secret — I have no idea what that was all about, the mayor has something in her bonnet about me — but I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

  “But why does the mayor have a beef with you?”

  Something to do with the ghost in my room, I want to say, but that would sound crazy.

  “I don’t know. I think she has me mixed up with someone else or she thinks I’m working with her cousin, for some reason.”

  And her cousin’s related to the ghost in my room.

  “Her cousin?”

  “The New Age-looking woman in that shop. Her name’s Cassiopeia, by the way.”

  Alicia laughs, and the tension drains. “She’s Merrill Seligman. She’s pretty well known in town, a big water conservation activist. When we were planning this trip, the mayor specifically said we needed to keep you all away from both her and that discussion. One of the reasons I happened to come looking for you, by the way.”

  “What discussion?”

  Richard waves his hand from his seat at the base of the spring. “Are we going to do this or what?”

  Alicia sighs. “A minute ago he was begging to go back to the hotel. Something about ghost tours keeping him up all night.”

  We start walking toward the group and Alicia whispers, “The mayor’s fighting with a conservation group about water issues, or some development residents are upset about. But you can’t write about it!”

  I send her a wink. “I’m a travel writer, always stay away from political issues. Promise.”

  Alicia passes a coffee to Richard who fails to offer gratitude, mumbles something about no cream, and the historian takes that cue to start our walking tour. We’re at the center of town in a beautiful park that surrounds the Basin Spring, the site where first Dr. Alvah Jackson used the waters to heal his son of an eye ailment in 1856 and then built a business selling “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water.” Next came Judge L.B. Saunders of nearby Berryville who brought his family to the Basin Spring to try to cure his erysipelas (I write this malady down but have no idea what it is and if I spelled it right). The judge built a small house near the spring that flowed into a natural stone basin at the time, hence its name. Mr. Historian claims the ancient Indian spring was graced with markings that vandals abused in the late 1800s.

  “What’s the historian’s name?” I ask Stephanie, because I may want to quote the guy in my article.

  “Harold P. Johnson,” she whispers back, and I’m so thankful for travel writers without ADHD.

  Mr. Johnson explains how the judge was cured of his illness that I can’t spell and began telling everyone of the healing springs in northwest Arkansas. Soon visitors were traveling to this magical place in the Boston Mountains, which I learn is what these hills of electromagnetic energy are called. On July 4, 1879, more than four hundred people came to the spring in the hopes of renewal and it was then that the judge’s son, Burton Saunders, declared “Eureka!”

  “The expression means ‘I have found it,’” Johnson explains. “And it’s been the name of the town ever since.”

  “I’d say ‘Eureka!’ if I could find some cream,” Richard mutters and we all ignore him.

  Streets were soon planned and Eureka Springs grew as more people arrived. By the end of 1879 lots were established and wooden homes quickly built. Dozens of other springs were discovered, but the town grew up around Basin Spring and a few nearby, which Mr. Johnson promises to show us.

  “By 1880 we had three thousand residents,” Johnson said. “By 1882, five thousand. Within a few more years there would be a rail line here and Eureka Springs one of the largest cities in Arkansas.”

  I look around the “Indian Healing Spring” that’s now harnessed from the mountainside into a manmade basin and fountain, surrounded by a cast iron fence. There’s a monument to World War I soldiers standing guard in the park’s center, plus numerous benches where tourists rest, including one created from a massive sycamore tree that once graced the springs. One of the benches has carved in its side, “Play it again, Sam,” and I’m about to ask Mr. Johnson what that means when I look up and see the group heading up Spring Street.

  I run to catch up and hear him mentioning the Osage Indians, a tribe who lived in the area and labeled this slice of heaven the land of blue skies and laughing waters. A place of miracles. Where are these native people now?

  “By the early twentieth century, there were numerous claims of people being healed here,” Johnson continues as we pass the stone walls of the Basin Park Hotel and tourists watch us from their breakfast on the second-floor balcony. Johnson pulls a paper out of his pocket and reads, “In 1926 a Dr. M.H. Owen wrote, ‘I firmly believe that nature, God, has given these springs to heal nearly every disease known to man, and these springs are yet in their infancy as far as their reputation and value are concerned.’”

  In my state of fatigue and recovery from being yelled at, I’m not in the best frame of mind. Part of me thinks stealing Native American miracle springs is not something to be proud of, while the other wonders if these waters will heal my broken heart.

  “How do people use these springs today?” I ask.

  Johnson is now walking backwards up Spring Street as he leads us on. “Unfortunately, the springs have become polluted over the years. The city’s growth took its toll on them. But there’s been work to bring them back and one of them, which we will go to, is clear enough to drink.”

  This news strikes me to the core, as if I learned that Santa doesn’t exist. So now people come to Eureka Springs for what, to walk around these gorgeous springs,
then go shopping, have a beer? A malaise, my constant companion these past three years, settles in my heart, this time a reminder that priorities have shifted in this country, focused on acquiring things made in China instead of what’s best for the earth and our souls. Or maybe it’s me, a broken woman who has lost a daughter and everything she owns to a monster storm some are chalking up to global warming, a threat that no one seems to be taking seriously. I can’t comprehend the machinations of the world anymore.

  Johnson takes us past the post office built in 1918, then to Sweet Spring, a gorgeous park built alongside the waters that’s emerging from inside a small hollow. As we descend the steps to the water’s edge, the air turns remarkably cooler.

  “Sweet spring was named for its pleasant, sweet taste,” Johnson explains.

  “Which we can’t enjoy anymore,” Richard inserts.

  Joe waits patiently for us to return so he can shoot the springs without interruption or people. Stephanie moves out of the way and takes in the lovely gardens surrounding the park, flowers beginning their early spring buds.

  “Shame about the springs not being accessible,” she says. “I sure could use some help with my arthritis.”

  I look back at the corner bluff, flowers cascading down toward the spring that still bubbles forth no matter what people have done to its environment; nature continues. Bees and butterflies flit from flower to flower and while we wait for Joe, I pause on a bench that reads, “Our Past is Your Present, Eureka Springs Preservation Society.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I say to no one, thinking of the passed people who appear to be hounding me these days. Still, I get it. Even now, sitting here listening to the buzzing of bees and the trickling of water, the tension drifts away and peace prevails. There’s an aura of healing that remains despite progress, and we spot many people standing by the springs, breathing in its beauty and energy.

  Johnson points out historic buildings, such as the circa-1901 Palace Hotel and Bath House across the street, as well as where hotels and spas used to be. We move up Spring Street and pause at three cottages established within the mountainside next to Harding Spring, a spot where one of the most famous healings took place.