Hudsonville: Tales of the Hunted

Chapter 5: Breaking and Entering

As he finished writing in his daily journal, Andy sat his pen to the side and closed the book. The recently acquired crystal ball softly hummed upon its pillowy pad in Andy's room, the boy himself sitting just across from it on his bed. His head cocked from the left to the right. So this thing was supposed to function like a phone? Could it leave messages? Could it take messages? Was the person's face just going to appear inside of it like a smoky apparition? The only way to find out any of this was to try and get it working to begin with, something Andy was rather hesitant about. He'd waited all day to

Better now than never, he thought to himself—Andy pulled out the small strip of paper Cici had lent him the evening prior, eyes scanning the note and its accompanying incantation. As he muttered the words quietly aloud, the purple smoke within the ball reacted with a swirl. Catching this, Andy paused with a slight jump, then continued to repeat the phrase, watching intently as the swirling clouds began to take shape. First, it became vaguely humanoid, then, the head grew sharp with spikes and antennae until finally, a great green eyeball came into focus and blinked.

"Hello? Hello, hello?" The Xita tested, tapping on her ball as though testing a microphone. Andy responded with a small wave.

"Howdy."

"Andy! Hi. You get it working? You can see me and stuff, yeah?"

"Guess so—so how's this thing work?"

"Pretty simple, really, you just need to find your psychic link with whoever it is you're wanting to speak to."

"Psychic link?"

"Yeah, so like—without getting too much into the weeds of it, you know that incantation I gave you? It's like a mantra used to establish a link with this psychic plane, the Dreamlands. Pretty much every unconscious mind is connected to the Dreamlands by default, so like, all you have to do basically is find a way to directly connect to another person's mind. This is where the crystal balls come in, they help our minds to visualize and focus on the other person we're trying to communicate with, and create easy, accessible links that pretty much any average joe can use. The only part of it you really need to put any effort into is thinking hard about who specifically you want to talk to. As long as they've got a ball of their own, you've got a connection."

Andy nodded along with the explanation, though he still didn't fully understand it. Suppose he didn't need to, based on what Cici was telling him. The prospect of speaking to anyone through a psychic link was intriguing—could he use this magic to communicate with his father? To tell him that everything was going to be alright, that he was safe? Once the girl had finished her yammering, Andy gulped and popped the question.

"Right...okay, so, what if the other person doesn't have a crystal ball?"

"That's a little bit harder. Unless you're like, some top-notch psychic, establishing a link with one person out of billions is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack, and even then, without a vessel of their own, I doubt you'd be able to communicate with them."

"But it's...I mean, it's possible, ain't it?"

"Theoretically. Why?"

Andy sighed. "Just curious. There's lots here I ain't too familiar with."

"Well, don't even worry about it," Cici laughed. "That's what I'm here for—your one stop shop for all things Hudsonville-y!"

The boy gave a humored, soft smile.

"I appreciate it."

"Hey, speaking of, we've gotta get you over here, pronto! You're basically free like, all the time, right?"