Page 9 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)

The Internet Has Everything

I spent a good long while pacing around my apartment.

Ron had gone home, probably to drink the night away. Truth was, I felt like finishing a bottle or two myself. Except getting drunk wouldn’t make this problem go away.

Was it a problem?

“Yes,” I said to no one. “It was.”

Then again, I thought, as I wandered aimlessly in front of my worn-out couch, it was kind of fun to see Ron’s surprise. And to see the reactions of everyone in the cafe. Except for the one bloke who didn’t much react at all.

Fun or not, something very weird was going on.

Yes, I lived in Shadow Pines where the bizarre had become commonplace, but I had always seemed to exist outside of all that.

.. drama. On the fringe of weird, not immersed in it.

My life had always been decidedly not weird, and I liked it that way. No, I preferred it that way.

I raised my upturned palm and a swirling gust of wind circled my simple dwelling.

“Welcome to Weirdsville,” I said.

I took in some air, held it, and paused on my way into the kitchen and that first of many beers. “Why wind?” I ask myself out of the blue. “I mean, what was the deal with that?”

For an answer, I did the only thing I could think of.

I fired up my laptop.

***

I poked around on the Internet for a bit and stumbled across various chatrooms with people claiming to control the wind with their mind. I mean... really? That’s a thing? And who was I to say otherwise?

I pinched myself again, for the dozenth time.

Not dreaming. Unless I dreamed I pinched myself.

I read many of their experiences, but none sounded like mine, or how I went about controlling the wind with my upturned palms and intention.

As an experiment, I focused on creating the wind in my mind only, and mustered a slight breeze.

Hardly anything at all, actually. But the moment I brought my upturned palms into play—whammo—a burst of wind blew the dining table chair over next to me.

More digging, more reading. I ended up in the ‘strange shit’ section of YouTube. I watched a lot of people standing around fields, ‘controlling’ the wind with their minds, pointing to swaying tree branches as evidence.

After some more online searching, I headed to and settled on a book called The Elementals: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water.

Elementals. It was a word I’d come across a number of times now in the last hour of being on the net. I waited for it to download to my Kindle, then settled into a nook on my battered and abused couch... and read until my eyes hurt.

According to the book, Elementals were four nature spirits that embodied the elements of antiquity.

The embodiments—or incarnations—of these elements took on the characteristics of the elements.

In fact, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was about a wind Elemental who aided the main character.

According to legend, Elementals, often under the guidance of archangels, were responsible for creating, renewing, protecting and sustaining life.

I read well into the night... and finished the book. Argh.

More. I needed more information.

Back on the computer. More research. Found a blog of interest. According to the writer—who claimed he was quite sensitive to the spirit world and wrote from firsthand experience—Elementals came in all shapes and sizes.

Often they were as elusive as spirits, existing just beyond our earthly sensitivities, but sometimes, not so much.

Sometimes, Elementals could manifest through humans, too.

I read every blog the guy wrote—dozens of them. I got up and rubbed my eyes, paced.

Elementals could manifest in humans? I just so happened to be human, and I could do this: I raised my hand, and a small wind blasted around my small apartment, knocking over a lava lamp, nearly breaking it in the process.

Oops.

I picked up the lamp and continued pacing.

I truly didn’t know what to do or who to turn to for help.

Only that blog seemed to contain any kind of useful information.

Wait, the author had a contact page. I hurried back to my laptop and dashed off a long, rambling, slightly incoherent email that I sent via one of my dummy email accounts.

(All private eyes have dummy email accounts.) If that guy could make heads or tails of my email, then he had to be a psychic indeed.

Another beer in hand—a cold one from the fridge—I dropped down into my overstuffed recliner. I’d gotten about halfway through it when a ping came from my computer.