Burning Karma: A Psychological Thriller

By George Norton, Sr

Ever since he was a child John Regan has been haunted by dreams that seduce him and frighten him to his core. In college he meets Diane and his dreams subside. But when Diane is taken from him, his dreams return, as do vivid memories of an abusive father. To save himself, John returns to the forest where he found solace as a child, to walk the Appalachian Trail through the Berkshires. There his dreams suddenly merge with events so startling that John’s life is changed forever.

Through the dreams and schemes of his characters, through the use of metaphor and cosmic irony, the author takes us far beyond the ordinary thriller genre, causing us to question what we routinely accept as reality, the nature of chance, and the implications of our actions.
“Burning Karma is a psychological thriller and a chiller. It is a book of unique wisdom that transports the reader to a place of tantalizing mystery. With surprising skill the author demonstrates how it is possible to change one’s life against all odds.”
—Janet Marshall, Author of Banana Moon

“G. F. Norton’s insightful descriptions of the Appalachian Trail corridor and wild places in the Berkshires complement a darkly intriguing tale.”
—Richard Wells, Berkshire Mountain Range historian and naturalist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Norton, Sr
• Release date: Jan 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463426043

George Norton, Sr

G. F. Norton has written numerous short stories. This is his first novel. He grew up roaming the forests of the Southern Berkshires, the setting of this book. He walks daily and continues to hike the forest trails of New England. G. F. Norton lives in Coventry, Connecticut with his wife Susan. Look for his new book, The Tiger And The King, coming soon.

Book preview

BURNING KARMA

A Novel

By

G. F. Norton

Copyright © 2018 by G. F. Norton

Revised Edition

All rights reserved

More Praise for Burning Karma

I do not read thrillers. But this is not a normal thriller. The rural backdrop as seen through the eyes of the protagonist lends a deep aura of peace to otherwise disturbing events. His watchful presence and his connection to the land create a wonderful sense of place. As the story unfolds, one feels held in the spell of this man’s love of nature, and that provides balance to the dark force of the novel’s perpetrator and to the mind games that the two are engaged in. The time the author took to establish his protagonist’s depth of character definitely pays off. He is thoroughly believable as are the other characters. The author shows us what motivates each of them by their actions as writers do; but as important, when they sleep, he sometimes allows us to witness their astonishing dreams! You may not always like what these people do, but you will enjoy meeting them. Don’t let the title fool you – nothing supernatural about the excellent, intelligent psychological thriller.

-Tansy Mattingly, Painter of Dreamscapes

With Gratitude:

To Susan, whose faith in my writing sustained me.

To Christopher, who read, typed, and helped evaluate a work in progress.

To my editor and friend, Hank. Honest and astute always.

To Michael, whose word processing advice was invaluable.

To John, who originally designed the book cover.

Intuition is really the sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.

Paulo Coelho

What if we assume our relationship to God to be one thing, and it’s really something else? Maybe, like children, we assume ourselves to be of central importance, and we’re not. Maybe the inequities that consume us here on earth aren’t really the issue.

Richard Russo

Sometimes, if the circumstances are just right, a split second of lucidity is all it takes.

The Author

Things add up,

Like our actions.

Not just what we did today.

Look back.

Even further than last year.

To childhood?

Even Further.

All the way back

To before we were born.

Every action has its consequences,

Often unintended.

More often than not.

And these consequences must be resolved,

Like it or not.

The Author

Chapter 1

The Cedar Field

This was the day he would remember for the rest of his life. Yet for a few more moments he noticed only normal things; the short grass that brushed his bare feet and made walking easy, the pungent smell of sticky cedar sap on the trunks and branches of the trees around him, green grasshoppers, invisible, until they leapt out of his path with clicks and dry whirrings of wings. The cedars were slowly taking over this pasture, their seeds first dropped by birds whose descendents now lived among their branches. These tweeted and twittered to their mates or simply sang out to the blueness of the sky and the sweetness of the air around them.

The boy loved this field because it was filled with secrets and surprises, like the bees that zoomed past him from sunlight into shadow always seeming to know just where they were going. Others cared for nothing but the clover blossoms on which they quivered turning around and round, each collecting little balls of sticky nectar and pollen that clung to rear legs and growing ever larger. (He had been stung one time on the bottom of his foot when he had stepped on one of these. That was a surprise!) If he leaned down close to a blossom bee, he could feel a stirring of air on his cheek from its busy wings, then a tiny breeze as it rose for a moment before it bee-lined away like the others. The trees were twice the boy’s height at least, and because the branches reached all the way down to sweep the ground, he could not see very far ahead. He knew just where he was going though, because he traveled this route with minor variations everyday, but always in the general direction where he knew the herd of dairy cows that had grazed its way across this field would be. They were creatures of habit, these cows. They expected to be found and accompanied back to the barn for milking.

The sun was warm on his skin as he rounded another tree. Sometimes he would startle a rabbit or maybe a grazing woodchuck who would sprint for the shelter of its burrow. It was fun to frighten woodchucks. They would stop just before descending underground to chatter their teeth at him. Then, when he got too close, they would dive to safety.

On any day he might come upon a grazing deer, and once he even surprised a doe with her spotted fawn. They both snapped their heads up and stared. Then they bounded away with graceful leaps. They had not heard his approach or smelled his scent because he had come from downwind. The boy had smiled and continued on his way. He always walked softly on the thick carpet of grass because the more silent he moved, like a gentle current of air, the more he was likely to see.

The cedars grew straight and were a dark vibrant green against the blue summer sky. Every year there were more birds nested amid the densely grown branches that afforded protection from the elements as well as predators. Usually the boy could hear birds moving and chirping but just now they were quiet. He paused briefly, listening, and wondered why. Then he moved on but more slowly than before.

Cautiously, he rounded what he knew was the last tree, then stopped, suddenly frozen. On the stone wall in front of him stood a fully-grown mountain lion. It too stood perfectly still, one front paw raised in the air, yellow eyes with their black pupils focused exactly on his own. The boy felt his heart race and then gradually begin to slow as a single bead of sweat rolled slowly down the middle of his back. The lion breathed in a steady rhythm, the only movement. Everything seemed to recede but the yellow eyes which held him tight with their incredible clarity. Inside the boy’s head his heartbeat echoed like a slowly beaten drum.

What will it do to me? he asked himself.

His mind, though, refused to answer. The question just hung there surrounded by the steady thud of his heart. Insects droned, unafraid, in the clear air between them. Did they even notice him or even the lion he wondered?

A gentle breeze whispered through the cedar branches behind him and the long tail twitched once, then twice. The lion’s eyes flicked away from his own as it crouched down and then sprang off the wall. It landed silently, leaped again into the forest and was gone from sight. Some quick movement of branches, then stillness.

The boy moved too after a while, his eyes still on the forest’s edge. He walked cautiously to the wall and then looked down, searching for a sign that he had seen a real thing. Was it possible that he had imagined the lion? Might he have fallen asleep in the sun and only just now awakened? But then he moved to where he thought the lion had landed, and there! A clear print where the grass was thin and the earth soft. He put a fingertip where each pad had made a depression. It had indeed been real!

He wasn’t sure how much time had just passed as he started off again, but the sun had moved more than he would have thought possible. When he finally arrived where the cows were waiting, they mooed at him to be taken to the barn and milked. They wondered where he had been.

His father said he was lucky to be alive. The boy thought about this. His father knew a great deal about nature and the animals living in the forests that surrounded their dairy farm. So he was probably right. It took a lot of thinking because his father knew so much more about the world, about everything. Or maybe almost everything. When he thought about staring into those yellow eyes and how he felt he remembered that when his heart slowed down the fear began to wash away. It was replaced by a feeling of wonder to be that close to the lion, just a few feet away. He knew the lion could have killed him easily, but it didn’t. Why? His father said he guessed it wasn’t hungry right then. There was something more though. He felt almost like he had been recognized.

The boy thought hard about all this for the next two days. Each afternoon on his way to fetch the cows he held his breath as he came around that last cedar tree. Both times he saw only the stone wall and the open field beyond. The woods revealed nothing. Then, on the morning of the third day he set out again for the cedar field and for the woods beyond. The boy thought he knew where the lion might live because he had been to the edge of this place, a canyon, with his father. They had walked into the woods and across a log bridge, then followed an old two-wheel track that was mostly overgrown. It was a logging road on which his father used to haul out firewood from trees he had cut down. He followed the track until it ended amid stumps and traces of slowly rotting branches, all that was left of the felled oaks.

From here it was about a mile to the canyon. His father called it Devil’s Canyon because of the way mountain lions screamed sometimes at night.

Like a woman being murdered, he said.

Once, in the late darkness when it was very still, he had heard the far away screams. They were scary. And even now, in the clear benign light of morning, he began to feel his stomach go tight and his intestines churn. These were the beginnings of fear. The boy stopped. How could he intentionally approach the creature that made those screams? There was a tree stump beside him and he sat down. He was still in man’s territory, but a few more steps into the trees beyond and this would no longer be the case. The lion claimed the deep woods. After another few minutes of walking it would become virgin forest with stands of giant hemlocks and then the cliffs. The land beyond where he sat was too steep and rocky to farm and so had never been cleared. People came here only on odd occasions, perhaps to hunt deer, to wilderness hike, to explore by compass, and they hardly ever went into the canyon.

Finally, his heart began to slow. It had accelerated when those fearful thoughts began to take over his body. He sat up straight on the stump, closed his eyes and breathed deep into his belly to calm himself. He felt the sun warm on his skin, almost like liquid. Then suddenly there was the image of those lion eyes and he moved behind them. He looked out and beheld a small human child standing very still who stared back. The lion wondered that the boy was not afraid and as she watched him she decided she would leave him to himself.

After a time the boy opened his eyes and found himself calm. He rose to his feet and moved to the edge of the clearing then stepped into the trees.

Some of the hemlocks that towered above were hundreds of years old. Their roots had found crevices in the rock beneath the shallow soil to anchor the tremendous weight of their trunks. At their upper reaches, where the flat green needles grew toward the light, the early afternoon sun was hot. Below, where the boy walked amongst the mammoth trunks, it was shady, even cool. He moved on cautiously, but at a steady pace.

At the cliff edge that marked the canyon’s boundary he stopped again. The forest below was littered with ancient trunks that had fallen and now in places formed occasional bridges across the rushing stream at the base of the descending cliffs. Ice age boulders of granite were strewn everywhere. To the boy’s eyes the canyon was wonderful and savage. It was fiercely exciting for him to be here by choice, alone, with his life in his own hands. He moved slowly along the edge searching for a way down. Making his way downstream, sometimes having to climb up and over a fallen trunk, he saw that ahead the cliff gradually became a steep bank. Finally, he arrived at a place where he thought he could safely descend and carefully began to make his way down. The subtle sounds of the deep woods, the wind in the treetops, occasional rustlings of small animals, were gradually eclipsed by the sound of the rushing stream. The air became cooler still as he approached. Fine spray permeated the air and began to condense on the skin of his face and arms as he walked upstream along the rocky bank. Very shortly the boy came upon a fallen hemlock trunk by which he could cross to the other side of the stream.

Once on the opposite bank he jumped off his tree bridge and began to ascend. Shortly he discovered the faint trail that he thought he might find. Squatting down he laid his hand flat on the cool earth. This might be the lion’s path, the way she climbed up to her den. He rose and began walking carefully, lightly placing one foot in front of the other on the barely visible path, his eyes searching. The narrow way rose and traversed upward along the bank to the base of the cliff proper. Then suddenly he saw just in front of his foot the sign he was looking for. He began to tremble as he squatted down. He laid his hand on the earth, again over the indented print of the lion’s paw. He felt dizzy and noticed his body was wet with perspiration despite the coolness of the forest. He knew he was near the lion’s home. Should he go on? He thought of the lion as her. Somehow he knew she was female. What if she had cubs to protect? What if she already knew he was here? He rose again and moved slowly forward, every part of him alert, feeling he was outside his own skin, eyes scanning above then to the sides as well as behind. Still trembling the boy approached the spot where the trail leveled off as it reached the top of the cliff. Another cliff loomed above on his right. To his left was a sheer drop to the steep bank and finally to the stream now far below.

He looked down at the path to perhaps see another print when suddenly he felt the skin of his scalp contract with fear. He stood very still. Then he raised his head and was staring, as he knew he would be, into those yellow eyes. The great cat was on a ledge only a few feet above him. The lion stared back, its black pupils contracting, its whiskers flattening, its teeth bared as a hissing sound grew louder. The cat’s shoulder muscles hardened as it crouched lower. In that split second before death found him, the boy leapt into space.

Over the cliff’s edge and down until the impact of his feet hitting the bank slammed his teeth together; then he tumbled, a sharp pain in his knee as it hit a rock, down finally to the bank of the stream. He rose quickly while trying to get a breath and then looked up. From far above the lion looked back at him, standing on the exact spot where he, himself, had stood moments before. She bared her teeth and hissed again, loud enough for the boy to hear even above the sound of the rushing stream.

He turned and plunged into the frigid water where he was instantly swept off his feet by the current and carried downstream. The cold took his breath away as he went under hit a boulder and spun. Then his head was back above the surface and his feet touched bottom. He pushed off toward the opposite bank only to be swept off his feet again as the tree-trunk bridge approached then loomed above. He pushed off the streambed once more and caught hold of a downward jutting branch. Using all his strength he pulled himself upward, caught another branch, up again, and he was on the bridge. Then with two quick steps and a jump he landed on the opposite side of the stream.

It was a hard climb up the ascending bank. His knee throbbed but still worked. His chest and left side hurt as he sucked in air. On hands and knees he continued upward until finally he reached the top. Turning around he looked back across the fallen tree below and then upstream. To his relief he saw no sign of the cat. There were only the giant hemlocks with the occasional swish of wind through their millions of needles. On the wind too came the now distant sound of the rushing stream.

The boy had just turned from the bank’s edge when he heard the high-pitched scream. It stood all his hair on end and sent a violent shake through his body. The lion’s scream, like a woman being murdered, stretched out over seconds then stopped. Ignoring the pain in his knee the boy ran!

When finally he reached the cedar field again, the sun was high up in the pale blue summer sky and felt wonderfully warm on his skin. The pungent trees smelled like safety. The boy felt better now too because his breath came easier. He made his way around one cedar and then others to the center of the field where he eased himself onto the grass and the soft earth beneath. After a while, he stopped shivering completely. The pain in his knee had begun to subside. He closed his eyes and again thought about what his father had said, Lucky to be alive. Now he knew it was true.

But how had he been so lucky and beyond the how, why? He had somehow sensed the lion above him and before it sprang he had jumped. Then he was able to get across the stream and away. In the reverie of his child’s mind came an insight. He had thought of the lion as his ally. There had been recognition, a mutual respect at their first meeting. But there was a boundary he now realized he had crossed when he followed the lion into her own territory. He had known she was dangerous and he had gone anyway. It had almost cost him his life.

Was he lucky he asked himself? Lying there, eyes closed, melting into the summer world around him, the boy, whose name was John, had begun to question what he really believed. He decided that if luck was a force in his life, as it seemed to be, then he must pay more attention to its limits. And he vowed in that moment that he would never jeopardize his life so casually again.

Chapter 2

Reliving Life

He was forty-three years old, and the one human being he loved above anyone else in the world had been gone now for almost two years. Diane had been his life partner and confidant, the one he relied on to validate his existence for almost twenty years. He loved their son, of course, in the way that only a parent can love a child, and Jack was still in the world. But sons become independent and move away, as they should, and are not of course life partners who share each day through all the days ‘til the end of their lives.

It had been hard, harder than he ever imagined it would be. Sometimes he thought he was losing his mind, that sitting in one place for hours at a time just thinking, unable to move or get started with anything, was doing irreversible damage to his brain. There was not a single part of his life that he had not relived, and so much of what he had relived in his memory did not give him much hope of going on. As his depression deepened, what he tended to recall were memories that drained his energy and smothered his will.

A great deal of the time he felt like a child again. Old fears came back to haunt him. His thoughts drifted, then locked with startling intensity on vivid scenes from his past. Here he was, back inside the farmhouse where he had grown up, at dinner, with his eyes on the table in front of him. He listened, tension building, to his father’s voice. Addressed to his brother, it was stern and demanding.

Eat the rest of the food on your plate.

His brother did not respond.

I said, eat it! an order, voice raised.

John heard his brother pick up his fork and begin to eat. He still did not look up. Even to look he felt would anger his father further.

And you. This time to his mother.

His father was at the beginning of a tirade, like a building storm. His brother Stan didn’t like, and now had trouble getting down, the casserole his mother had prepared. It didn’t matter that Stan was gagging. John knew that his brother suffered from a natural aversion to some foods that changed with no rhyme or reason and was unpredictable to his mother in advance.

What the hell did you cook that damn casserole for? He wouldn’t eat it last time and he is refusing to eat it now. Well, he’s going to eat it anyway.

Just leave him alone, John thought, all the while knowing he could not help his brother. To be anything but silent and passive would only make the situation worse.

His mother sat there with her head bowed, just like John, looking at the table.

His father stood up, leaned over and sniffed at his mother. You smell like a cow.

Because she got up to milk them this morning while you slept, John answered in his head.

When was the last time you took a bath? his father again.

You wouldn’t know John replied silently. You sleep in your own separate room.

His mother had started to cry. Silently. Did his father notice? Yes, because he switched his attention to Stan once more, his goal accomplished quickly with his wife.

Eat it! as he slammed his open hand down hard on the table, causing the plates to jump.

Stan ate faster, gagging between bites as he attempted, so far successfully, to swallow his food. Later he would vomit privately, as quietly as he could manage.

The meal went on, John’s family together, eating in silence, until everyone was done and his father pushed back his chair, got up and with nothing more said, walked out of the room.

The streaming video inside his head, once started, moved relentlessly on. There were worse times. One occurred, John remembered, when he and his brother Stan found a nest of abandoned eggs in the haymow. One of the hens, all of which roamed freely around the barn and outbuildings during the day, to be closed up in the chicken house only at night, must have flown up there, laid eggs and then failed to return. Since the eggs were found outside of the do not break or take domain of the normal egg laying nests, he and his brother had considered them fair game.

They located a box and carried the eggs carefully down from the haymow to the front of the barn. Next, they painted a bulls-eye target on the boards using whitewash. John, the instigator, reasoned that when they were done practice throwing the eggs, the whitewash would still be wet and they could rinse everything away at once with water from the hose. It was a plan that would have worked except for one minor detail. The eggs were rotten.

There are few smells in this world as bad as rotten eggs, so after they each had thrown one, they knew. But the excitement of the moment held them fast. They looked at each other and threw two more; splat, splat! Then two more and so on until the supply was exhausted.

By this time the stench was overpowering. Only a heartbeat later, their father appeared at the open barn door.

What in the hell is that god-awful stink? he growled.

He stepped outside, looked at the barn wall, then back at his boys and said, You little bastards!

They stood paralyzed and speechless, awed at the gravity of what they had set into motion. Their father had gone first red with anger and then white with rage. Stan was so terrified he started to moan.

John wanted to run but instead stood frozen, arms askew, legs bent at the knees, a parody of flight for survival’s sake.

You stupid little bastards, as he took two quick steps forward and grabbed John by his upper arm. You are going to be damn sorry you caused that god-awful stink he grated through clenched teeth.

He pulled John in jerks toward the carriage shed, fingers, like a vice, biting into his arm. He rolled the door open, iron wheels rumbling on iron tracks. Stepping over the threshold, he yanked John in behind him and rolled the door shut.

It was deep dusk inside the shed, the only light filtering feebly in through a small, dirty window.

His father let go of his arm then stepped to the pony cart and snatched up the buggy whip out of its holder. Pull down your pants, he ordered in a tone not to be disobeyed or even pleaded against.

So John did and his very own father stepped forward and began to whip his bare buttocks with the instrument meant just to flick at the thick hide-protected flanks of a pony.

John did not scream. He said, No softly each time his father raised the whip again for another stroke. No meant, No, I thought you loved me. Until finally he cried. The crying probably meant he received fewer strokes than he would have otherwise. Through it all he felt astonishment, a jolting disbelief that only later turned into repressed rage.

At last his father stopped, breathing hard. Pull up your pants and go send your brother in, was all he said.

John rolled open the door and stepped out into the blinding day. He walked over to Stan who was white as death and trembling with terror. Stan feared their father more than John did if that was possible. He wanted to tell Stan to run, but he knew it would do no good.

So he said, He wants you next.

Stan stood stock-still, apparently unable to move.

You better go. If he has to come and get you it will be worse.

Stan still did not move. Finally, John gave him a shove toward the shed. Stan, having gained some momentum continued on his own, still moaning softly to himself. When he reached the open door he froze, the sight of his father holding the whip stopping him dead in his tracks again. The last John saw of Stan was when an arm reached out from the shadows inside and yanked him stumbling over the threshold. The door rumbled shut on its wheels of iron.

They probably should have run to their mother, but it was no use; she would not have protected them, being too afraid of him herself. To the woods then until he had calmed down some. But they were only kids and he controlled them with his anger and his threats, threats that were all too often for real.

I’m not kidding around, he would say. He wasn’t either.

To an outside observer, John imagined he appeared to have survived the beatings, and yes there were more, with few apparent ill effects. Within an hour of this one he was going about his normal routine again. Stan was different. He had started screaming as the door rolled shut behind him and had kept screaming until his father had gotten tired of whipping him. Stan sat (when he could sit again) very still, by himself, for a week afterward. He seemed to be in shock. He did not speak. Gradually he came back to acting normal again. Acting. No one could see what was going on inside.

It was so simple. Stan just needed more. He