Practical Witchery! - John Stormm (best novels to read for beginners TXT) 📗

my new friend, that wasn’t very clear to me at the time, but it gave me a hint of how to deal with this gentle soul, and help him move on. I’ll share it in the course of this story, so that you can determine for yourselves as to where I was coming from, in my approach to this kind of haunting.

I had just taken on a preventative maintenance and housekeeping type of job, at a local hospital, in their Radiation Oncology Clinic, and my first, full length fantasy novel: “Matriarch of The Witch Clan”, was just beginning to come out into print. I had instantly become known as the “resident witch” in the hospital, and copies were selling like hotcakes all around me. Within the confines of the clinic, was known a haunted examination room, where patients and nurses would see a man who wasn’t there, in the reflections in the glass around the nurse’s station, and leaving his imprint on the pillows and sheets of the freshly made examination table in a specific room. On two occasions, a nurse had approached me about what to do to banish a spirit from there. It was creepy, at the very least. And this had been going on in this one room, for fully six years now. Many felt uncomfortable talking about it, but everybody had some kind of experience with it, and now since a witch was working the evening shift after closing, maybe somebody could remedy the situation for them. I was only too happy to try. But I don’t have some set standard chant or spell for making generic shit happen. I approach my spellcraft in my own professional manner.

The clinic was usually closed shortly after 4pm on most evenings, and by five or six, it was empty of all staff, except for myself and whatever contractors and technicians were required to service the two linear accelerators and the M.R.I. machine. It was an underground area, with thick, lead lined walls, and special keyed secure entrances at two ends. Until midnight every week night, I had these premises to myself, to make sure that everything was in ship shape condition, for business as usual the very next business day. I’d wipe down and disinfect all of the working surfaces, and leave all the glass and chrome work in glistening condition. For health and even confidence reasons, it was important that everything was perfect for the patients.

When someone tells you that you have cancer, and that they will help you get through your ordeal, it is vitally important that everything in your surroundings, gives them the impression that your staff will be equally meticulous in ALL aspects of their treatment. We treat the whole patient, and not just the tumor here. Inevitably, when I looked into Exam Room #2, I’d find the imprint of a human head in the crisp clean pillowcase and sheet on the exam table. I would continually replace these and fluff up the pillow, only to find one there again, when I looked in and checked the room one more time before I left off of my shift.

On more than a few occasions, I’d be breezing on down the hall, and catch a glimpse of a small man, in his mid fifties, with salt and pepper gray hair, wearing a hospital gown, sitting on the edge of the exam table, rocking his legs back and forth, as if he were waiting for his doctor to get back to him. The first time that had happened, I almost flipped out on the staff: thinking that they had all left for home and forgotten a patient. But looking back into the room; I found no one inside, and there was that imprint in the pillow, that told me that someone was there recently. When I was cleaning the glass, around the nurse’s station, opposite the exam rooms, I had clearly seen his reflection in the glass. But looking over my shoulder, I saw no one. And again, there’d be that imprint in the pillowcase. The next time that I saw the head nurse, I shared my experiences and she told me that this was what was commonly experienced there, in that particular room, for the past six years. Housekeeping staff shunned working in those lonely halls at night, and the nurses hated being the last ones leaving at night, because the apparition there was most unsettling.

There was also the ghost of a nun, who hung around for another month or so, after she had passed away, that would help comfort the comatose patients that were brought in for treatments, in the in-house holding room across the hall. She didn’t like witches at all, and would follow me about chanting: “Wick, wick, wickedy witch!” whenever I had entered her area. I confess, that I found her more than a bit creepy. But those comatose patients that had revived and improved, would often ask after Sister Helen Rita, who they remembered as had helped them through their ordeals in that room. She was remembered by the staff as a helper there, before her recent demise. Eventually, the good sister got her own tap on the shoulder, and informed that her earthly ministry was done, and she moved on, as most spirits in hospitals do. However, Exam Room #2 remained consistent for at least six years, and showed no signs of abating. The head nurse asked if I could banish it, but I wasn’t sure that this was the right thing to do in this case.

I took to taking my spare time, to sitting quietly in Exam Room #2, and just feeling for the other occupant sharing it with me. I could close my eyes in the dark, and I could make out the voices, as if of someone in yet another room closed to me. I picked out a name that sounded like “Georgie”, “Gordy“, or “Gregor”. Eventually we had found a record for a deceased patient still remembered by some of the older staff, who was treated by a doctor no longer on staff there for years. Georgie was a mild and kind fellow, who felt that he was better treated by the staff here in this clinic, than he was ever treated at home. Knowing the kind of staff that we went through great pains to hire there, this really wasn’t a surprise.

Georgie had passed on, as a result of his cancer, and was stuck in his own timeless dream of patiently waiting in his usual room for his doctor to see him. He wasn’t aware of the time that had passed, or that was passing even now. He was not an angry, mean or troubling sort of soul. He was a mild, kind and patient sort of guy. The nurses who remembered him in life, had remarked that he was a “real dear”. In order to “banish” a spirit such as this, I’d have to create an atmosphere in that room, that would make him uncomfortable enough to “move on”, and subsequently this same atmosphere would make any other patient using that room, feel uncomfortable for all of the same reasons. This could be very self defeating for the kind of work we did there. I had to find another way to help Georgie find a good reason to vacate the room. Here is where a strange dream that I had a couple months previously, had resolved itself into my solution for our mutual problems.

A Dream Within a Dream…

In this dream, it was a lovely summer day, just outside of a picturesque little hamlet of a town. Two old friends were taking me to see their favorite fishing spot. They just knew that I was going to love it. We had stepped off the dirt road, between a pair of large flowering bushes, to walk up to a really large willow tree, next to a calm, glassy pond. They had indicated that the fishing gear was onsite, and I was wondering where that was, as there was no shack present in the area. We walked up to an opening in the trunk of the big willow, and cut into the polished wood interior, was a winding stair, and a wicker fishing creel, some waders, and a couple fishing poles hanging on some pegs along the wall, going up the stair. At the top of the stairs, another opening presented itself, where I could walk out onto a low, wide branch hanging out over the pond. I could look right down into the water, and see the fish swimming in its crystal depths. I felt that I could love hanging out here, all day on almost any day. We all sat on the branch, and talked of old times. It seemed to dawn on me, that I haven’t been in the comfortable company of these two old friends for a very long time. We even sang a couple old time hymns acapella together. I sang the bass of our trio.

We decided to move out from under the trees, and that they would show me the little town. As we came into the residential area, I noticed all of the nicely built, clean and pretty homes in this neighborhood, and that people were sticking their heads out of the windows, and out onto their porches. Kids and their parents started lining up along the curbs, and watching up the street toward the little red brick fire house, that had a welcoming banner up, a couple firemen playing checkers out front, and a table full of refreshments set up in the bay that would normally hold a fire engine. Somehow, it didn’t strike me as so strange that there was no fire engine in there. Down the street, I could see the crowd of people cheering, giving a hero’s welcome, and waving at someone. About then is when a shiny convertible rounded the corner, with two uniformed firemen sitting high on the back seat, waving back and pointing at everyone. The car stopped in front of the fire house, and the welcoming party began. It was early in the morning, when my alarm went off, and woke me out of this dream.

I got up, switched on the TV to catch the morning news and weather, and got ready for work. As per my usual custom, I pondered what the meaning of my last night’s dreaming meant to me. I got my morning cup of coffee, and moved into the living room, to hear a report of a nasty fire in Syracuse that night. My coffee started coming out of my nose, when it was mentioned that two firemen had lost their lives fighting that fire, and then they showed the station pictures of the two fallen heroes. I had remembered seeing them getting a hero’s welcome, in a lovely little hamlet that I had dreamed up only an hour or so before this! But exactly what did any of this have to do with me, and how could I process this information in any way that I could use? I had already understood about the extra-planar, extra-dimensional nature of reality. There aren’t any “coincidences” in my world. Everything I do and see, has a bigger reason that interlocks it with everything else.

Back to Georgie’s Problem…

I considered how to properly and kindly approach Georgie, about his situation. To his perspective, this was all as timeless as a dream, where he was in a place, where people treated him kindly and respectfully. Since he had no other prospects, that he knew of: He was content to be in such a nice place, waiting for his kindly doctor, who would not be coming to treat his no longer existent cancer. I thought that there were all sorts of places, that he might rather spend some of that time, than a hospital exam room. I thought about that fishing hole, and then I thought that if