“We returned to our seats after a few minutes of gawking in awe [at the Medicine Wheel], too respectful to touch it, but wanting to all the same. Ben continued talking about the healing properties of this technique and elaborating on the different types and sizes of skins and their purposes. Then he asked for a volunteer. My hand shot up with the others, but he chose Frank’s wife, Leah, a very sweet petite blonde woman who always had a look of consternation on her face. Frail looking and thin, she was timid, almost afraid, but with an underlying strength about her. I wondered if she knew it was there. Frank looked on with mild interest, but he appeared mostly aloof. He was an average size man of average height, good-looking, with olive skin and dark hair and eyes. He seemed confident and friendly enough, but difficult to read. Something didn’t feel right, but I had no tangible reason for it.
Leah stepped up to the table and stopped where Ben instructed her, facing the table with her back to the majority of the group. However, because Cathy and I were at the far edge of the curve, we were practically facing both of them, giving us a much better view.
Ben draped a shawl-size decorated skin over Leah’s shoulders and asked her to hold the excess in her hands in front of her. Much taller of the two, Ben reached outward and down to caress Leah’s aura around her head and shoulders, very respectfully and without touching her, occasionally shaking the negative energy out through his fingers and rattling the beads on his wrist in the process.
Then I noticed, or rather felt, a change in the room’s energy. Leah’s expression looked pained, and I found myself thinking she was deliberately fighting the healing. Ben’s forehead broke out in a mild sweat, his beads were shaking more frequently, and then everything suddenly stopped. Ben delicately removed the skin from Leah’s shoulders, thanked her, and asked her politely to return to her seat. From what I could gather, there appeared to be some profoundly negative energy coming through Leah. Judging by the expressions on both of their faces, it was dark and painful and powerful, a force of its own, and it was fighting the healing with every ounce of its strength. She exchanged an odd momentary look with her husband and shrunk back in her seat. What was that? Now it’s gone. Did I just imagine seeing Frank’s lips curled back and teeth bared like a rabid dog? It had lasted only a split second, so I couldn’t be sure.
Just then, I noticed Frank’s hands were clenched into fists so tight that his knuckles were white, which was a stark contrast to the now calm, but smug, expression on his face. I wondered what that was all about and whether he was merely the jealous type. Had he misunderstood the healing between Ben and Leah and then actually done something to force them apart? What was really going on here? I thought of my reading with Sarah and her warning that someone near me would be in danger. I wondered if she meant someone close to me in spirit, or simply near me in the same room, as Leah was to me now. The answer did not come.”