The Presage

Part 7

'THE SLEEPING DEATH in  1840s'

Tom typed on the keyboard before hitting the search button,he waited for the results to appear on the monitor,his body strumming with nervous energy and was not disappointed as he found what he was looking for.Clicking one of the search results he read on.

Shelly Martin,aged 18 was found dead in her apartment on the 16th September .Her acquaintances reported her missing six months prior to this discovery.The autopsy of the nearly decayed body was conducted by Mr Daniel who is a pioneer in forensic medicine.But he informed the press that there was no marks of injury to prove that it was a murder.He  further revealed that, it looked like as if   the girl had  simply gone to sleep and  had never woken up.There was no sign of an over dosage of drugs or  intake of  poisonous substances of any kind.After questioning all her near and dear ones the police was not able to uncover any clues. Some of her friends revealed that she had  recently joined one of  the infamous cults in the neighborhood,shortly before her demise.The local people are under the impression that witchcraft is involved in her death and they refuse to let her body be laid in the local cemetery.Her body has been burned instead ,a peace  the local superstitions......

Tom searched the web to find the place of her burial but there was no mention of it anywhere.Tom felt as if there were many loose ends involved in the death of Shelly Martin.He felt that the man who was now following him,the fake Mr Reeds had something to do with Shelly.He thought that this man might be the cult's chief,so he continued browsing the web for the cults which where related to astral projection.But he couldn't find anything important, so at last he gave up.

A week had now passed since he had seen Mr Reeds so he decided to pay him a visit today.Over the week Tom had taken great pains to avoid astral travel and had never had any of his memory lapses for some time.Mr Reeds seemed happy to see him and he told Tom that he had read the journal and had then passed it on to one of his seniors.He   assured Tom that with his senior's help they will now be able to solve this problem.Tom told him about the information he had found about Shelly Martin on the net.He told Mr Reeds about how he thought that the mystery man was connected to Shelly in some way.Mr Reeds suddenly asked Tom whether ,he had read the entire journal.When Tom replied in negative to that,Mr Reeds went about filling him in on what he had missed.

"Towards the beginning of  the journal the entries were made by Shelly Martins and then by her astral form.But after around five years after her death the entries seem to change.They no longer seem to be written by Shelly but someone else.It seems that over the span of those years she has disappeared and  someone else had taken over the writings.And it seems that, the new person is still continuing,that is until the latest entry which you yourself had read.  Now my colleagues and I had a discussion about it ,we assume that Shelly some how found a person who could see her and with his or her help had managed to escape from the astral plane.But in the process someone else ended up in her place."

"Mr Reeds,is it possible that  the person who saw her, is the one who is now trapped in the astral plane?Does it mean that one can only get out of it, if one is replaced by someone else? But then wouldn't it mean an endless cycle of people being trapped one after the other?But then why is it that there are no other cases of such deaths being reported."

"Tom like I said we just have hypotheses and not facts to guide us on.How these things work out,  will depend on that particular individual.For Shelly who was an avid astral traveler it will be much easier to manipulate another person,but that might not be the case for everyone else.Like this person,for that matter who is still trapped in the astral plane.It is possible that if Shelly had been seen by a person who was as skilled as her,then he might have been able to help her without endangering himself.But as to why such a death was not  reported again,may be it is simply because no such death took place again.The person who took Shelly's  place might have been killed  or his physical form simply destroyed ."

For some reason Tom  suddenly thought about the dream he had about his mother shooting him.May be that is how the mystery man intended to destroy him,so that he could escape.But why would his mother want to kill him?