Cold Suspicion

I had always given Norman the benefit of the doubt when others wouldn't. Maybe it was his nervous and quiet nature; nothing ever seemed to be calm about him. He kept his mouth shut in large groups but his body language spoke volumes about his interests and his intentions. Other people didn't trust him; but we had a nice arrangment going. He found the problems. I helped take care of them.

But it soon became apparent that not only did others mistrust Norman, but this mistrust seemed to extend to the other world as well.

My first notice came during a shamanic channeling ceremony that I was invited to bare witness to. At that time, we had one hell of a crew. Where one of us went, you'd most certainly find several others along for the ride. We were all fools - playing with things that we shouldn't have been; but we were having more fun than most of us ever did. We were like the children in Stephen King's IT; just stupid enough to try and take on things that should be overwhelming; playing with things that should have been left alone.

There we were with nothing better to do, so we decided to sit in on a shamanic ceremony where the spirit of some ancient Native American was to be channeled. Let me be the first to say, that although I'll believe a lot of crazy things, I'm usually the first person to be completely skeptical. I like to see things with my own eyes, and personally, seeing someone yammer on with a English accent doesn't strike me as the most supernatural of things. Still... you have to take the good with the bad and hope that the good is more than worth all the times you feel like a jackass for getting excited over smoke and mirrors and parlor tricks.

Obviously, I wasn't too impressed with the channeling. But I knew lunchtime was nearly upon us, so I was definitely sticking it out until I could get myself a cheese sandwich on a pretzel or something.

About two thirds of the way through this thing, Norman passed by me with a nervous look on his face. A few seconds later, I received a rush of cold straight through me. I felt like I was just struck by a Winter wind full of frost and everything, even though we were in the dead of Summer, indoors, and without a fan or breeze to cool us down.

I didn't put two and two together at first, so I simply moved my position in the room. I walked around Norman and placed myself a few feet from his right. Again, nervously, Norman passed by me, and a few seconds later I was struck with the same feeling, only this time it was more intense - the strongest of chills.

I quickly spoke out, since I was bored anyway, and this was the first interesting thing to happen all day. I asked why the hell I was feeling a shooting cold pass through me at certain points in the room. Norman laughed nervously, and the Patty, the shaman, explained that what I was feeling was the spirit of an Indian named Yellow Feather. Apparently, Yellow Feather believed that Norman was the reincarnation of a person who had slaughtered many Indians in the past and that he had now returned to finish the job.

Everybody seemed to have a nice laugh at that little story and the ceremony soon ended without any more occurences of this "Yellow Feather", or anything else for that matter. Patty impressed me with her skillful shamanism, which I, at first, had doubted. I was now certain that there was something in that room... and it was pissed. And whatever it wanted, seemed to have something to do with my good friend Norman.