Spirit Caller 01 - Spirits Rising

to tremble. The wind whipped my hair around. Dammit, I should have brought a hairband. I ignored the Medusa image that came to mind and focused on a steady calling of the spirits. I would ask the Vikings to return to their rest. Then, once they were gone, I’d try it again with the first peoples.
    “Holy crap,” Manny whispered next to me.
    I didn’t need to open my eyes to see what caught Manny’s attention. The pressure I was feeling was more than enough. There were spirits. Thousands of them. A few dozen Vikings and thousands upon thousands of aboriginal peoples.
    I struggled to stay conscious. If I hadn’t spent the day quietly painting and napping, I’d have passed out by now. As it was, I felt the warm trickle of blood drip off my lip.
    I felt a pop and realized that a protective sphere had formed around the three of us. I fought back the surge of relief. It actually worked!
    “Mrs. Saunders, I need you to start praying the way you did at my house when you sent them away. Manny and I are going to tell the spirits that it’s time for them go back. First you, Manny. Thank them for their help. Then, I’ll let the others know the invaders are gone and they can go back to sleep.”
    “Got it,” Manny said.
    Mrs. Saunders didn’t respond. She merely began her prayers.
    “Rachel!” David shouted from somewhere in the blackness of the night. I couldn’t turn to see him. I was too afraid to move, afraid to break the fragile sphere that protected me. I could not banish them. There was no way that I could. I needed Mrs. Saunders to do it.
    “Can’t talk,” I shouted back.
    The spirits screamed and charged us. They bounced against our flimsy sphere of protection, somehow angered by our banishing spells.
    Mrs. Saunders merely prayed louder, words merging between French and English, and perhaps even a little Latin, her Hail Marys coming out in a cornucopia of languages.
    It wasn’t enough. The spirits faded a little every so often, but there were simply too many of them. They began pulling up headstones, hurling them at each other, marble smashing against marble, sending crushing pebbles through the air.
    A wave of chills shivered through my body.
    “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” David’s voice came closer to me. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth—”
    The sphere grew in strength and encompassed David. I could feel the power drain a little when it wrapped around him.
    “David, don’t fight it. Let it come over you. It won’t hurt you. As long as people stay out of the graveyard or inside this sphere, the ghosts cannot hurt.”
    “What can we do?” he asked.
    “Focus on something you believe in.”
    I must have been shouting when I said it because, all around us, I heard the increasing voices of people, as though they were standing around the graveyard. I opened my eyes and saw the flicker of movement farther off in the distance. A bit of reflective striping moved.
    Then I heard it, the words coming clear. Prayers. Wishes. Someone even hummed
    AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”
    Cold coursed through my veins. Not from the pouring rain or even from the cool night air. But from the power that surged around us.
    The ghosts stopped and stared at me. Really stared at me. We could see into each other’s souls at that moment. They could see my loneliness, my isolation, my fruitless yet endless longing to be normal. And I could see into them. Their pride in the land, still unmarred by development. Their burdens of watching their people disappear into spirits over the centuries. Their haunting and shaping of the new visitors that arrived and their struggle against those who did not believe in the ancestors.
    Mrs. Saunders stood up, not needing my help at all. She walked through the protective sphere. It bent and buckled, but snapped back into place once she exited. I let out a breath of relief. Mrs. Saunders approached the Viking leader and lightly touched his chest. He collapsed to the ground in front of her. The others followed suit. The Beothuk man approached her. They stared at each other before the man turned his eyes away. They did not kneel but Mrs. Saunders did not seem bothered by it.
    “You were brought here against your will. Go. Be at peace in the Otherworld again. Do not return.”
    The Viking leader looked up at her, a weary smile on his face. He faded away, as did the others.
    Then, the elder spirit emerged from the shadows. She smiled at us and said,