Dead Mentors

By Sandra Nichols

An over-worked healthcare manager never dreamed she'd find the cure for her loneliness among the paranormal inhabitants of a futuristic prison. Nor did she suspect that a stranger far away would be watching her every move. Yet, that is exactly how Sophia Deming discovered the secret to an authentic life.

Sophia Deming, a Canadian expatriate working miserably in a Florida health system, is desperate to find a more meaningful life. On a trip to see her sisters Cynthia and Louise in Canada, she visits a psychic therapist, John Burns, hoping for some answers, but she is skeptical of his far-fetched forecast and returns to her life in Florida feeling just as hopeless and lost as before.

Sophia's true path of self-awareness begins with the unlikely discovery of her dead mother's play entitled "The Antiquity", about a disillusioned biomedical scientist, Russell Durnin, who finds confirming evidence for his research on happy pills called the 500's in a futuristic commune. Strange events and misfortunes begin to occur in Sophia's life that mirror those of Durnin and the predictions made by Burns, the psychic, who can remotely view her as well as the ghosts, tricksters, and imps that accompany Sophia during the course of her strange adventures.

As a production of "The Antiquity" gets underway, family drama is at an all-time high and Sophia is entrenched in her duties as the selfless custodian of her sisters' calamities. On opening night, however, when a portrait of Sophia's mother is unveiled upon the stage, a family secret reveals the reason for Sophia's emotional captivity.

"Dead Mentors" is a hauntingly beautiful novel in three dimensions of reality about three sisters and one woman's magical and perilous search for truth that examines the quest for self-awareness, demonstrates the importance of family, and confirms the power of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Nichols
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781393534389

Sandra Nichols

Sandra Nichols is a Canadian author from Peterborough, Ontario. In diverse genres, she writes inspirational books about self-awareness and conscious optimism. Nichols has an extensive background in nursing and healthcare management as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Multidisciplinary Studies. She is the mother of two adult children and lives with her husband, Alan, and their tabby cat, Zoey, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Follow Sandra at www.sandranichols.com.

Book preview

Dead Mentors

Prologue

Imet Sophia Deming in my reading room in 2005 on a summer afternoon in Peterborough, Ontario. When Sophia called my office for an appointment, my wife, Catherine, was able to fit her into my schedule immediately. Mr. Freidman had just canceled his four o’clock due to illness. That the stomach flu consumed Mr. Freidman on that particular day was no coincidence. There is no such thing as coincidence, after all, in my estimation. I was supposed to meet Sophia in Mr. Freidman’s place and Sophia was to learn about the way to her true self. I am always eager to meet patients whose readings are arranged in synchronistic fashion. Sophia was visiting her sisters in Peterborough for just seven days, yet she managed to slip into a rare opening in my schedule. Such readings are meant to be.

She sat opposite me on the sofa and responded politely to my questions, revealing her age of 54 years and her place of residence in Reynolds Beach, Florida. Sophia told me she worked as a healthcare manager. I had no idea what that was, but I knew that it was a vocation incompatible with her energy. Her voice was musical, its harmonies a sign of the persuasive orator with the gift of auditory perception, a clear indication that healthcare and management were unsuitable professions for her type. I also noted that she was a male energy in a female form, assertive and sensitive simultaneously, typical traits of the Libran woman ruled by Venus. From her silhouette, just behind the rounded line of her shoulders, her Venusian aura arrived like a golden headdress in fascinating folds of red and turquoise.

I was enchanted by Sophia’s aura. It framed her face and fell to the floor like an empress’s gown. She sat modestly in the center of her own majesty, in black slacks and sweater, asking me if her children will be happy, if she would find her way out of mundane work, and if her songs would ever be published. Though she knew a more meaningful life awaited her, like many of us, she wanted evidential signs and hoped my forecast would reveal them to her.

Poor Sophia! An unconfirmed artist, a seeker of love and beauty, bereft of both. Her external world, particularly her work, constrained her and its damage was evident behind the smile of her gently tilted face. She knew her enlightenment was stuck, that her path meandered. It was evident in her dreams of searching and being hopelessly lost. She also knew her natural instinct, the artistic ones, had been bullied into submission by external forces. She knew all about individuation. What she didn’t know was that her quest to reclaim her instinctual self was shrouded by the complexity of her pursuit! She looked everywhere too vigorously, mostly in the works of the great philosophers and scholars that lined her library shelves. In my experience as a psychic therapist, readings are especially helpful to those like Sophia, the ones who examine their lives astutely, but cannot find their position at the starting gate of their own adventures.

I found it difficult to avoid a description of her ephemeral beauty. I had to tell her. Sophia was such an old soul! I told her that some felt her energy was small but that it couldn’t possibly be so, not when I was able to witness such enormous waves of power emanating from her before my eyes. She was only modestly interested in her cosmic relevance, her aura, and her past lives, all of which I revealed to her. Finally, I honored my professional obligation to perform a reading of her future. It was difficult for me to disappoint Sophia Deming that summer day.

As my reading progressed, I was guided by an entourage of gentle souls whose attention migrated toward Sophia; her presence had summoned an ethereal assembly of witnesses. They came to ensure that my words conveyed the proper direction of the path from which she had strayed. There, in my small reading room in Peterborough, a quiet speck in the swirling universe, ancient visitors congregated for deliberation! I was to tell Sophia what she needed to hear through their counsel. Sophia, seeking answers from a therapist with the gift of foresight and completely unaware of the mystic congregation her presence attracted, sat abidingly as the guides delivered their messages through my voice.

Tell her she has many "knowns!" they urged me.  Tell her she is here to teach what she knows! I told her she was a leader. She could not possibly continue to work for others much longer; the idea was outrageous. As directed, I told her that the weight of guilt blocked her lower chakras, that her daunting use of the but word must cease. Enough, Sophia! Enough guilt!  I was asked to speak to her with urgency. Tell her we ask her to find her healing energy, they encouraged me. I stopped abruptly at this suggestion as I visualized Sophia’s ability to achieve an out-of-body experience. When I revealed this uncommon gift to her, she appeared unmoved.

I believe Sophia felt that I had confused her energy with that of someone else. An out-of-body experience, she had wondered. He must be mad! She was an advocate for the exalted states, not a participant. She knew about mystical gifts, but she believed they were reserved for people with exceptional sensory awareness, an attribute she felt she lacked. Tell her she chose to be a duality in this life! I explained that her depression was due to the fact that she would rather be back there, not here, not in the earthly realm. Tell her she was pushed! They counseled.

I asked Sophia for questions. Her primary concern was for her two children. I told her not to worry; they would be safe and secure, that they were delightfully sensitive individuals who shared their mother’s compassion and idealism. This information pleased Sophia. She wanted to know if she would make it as a songwriter and if she would ever move back to Canada and be with her family. These were her aspirations at the time.  I answered her questions truthfully, of course. She would do none of those things. Her saddened expression must have sparked my next vision, the one that mattered most. I saw a young dancer beneath a starlit sky. I heard the sound of violins.

Your mother is involved in a recital, I told her. Sophia shook her head.

Not possible. My mother has been dead since I was ten. You must be thinking of my sister, Cynthia. She’s a stage producer. Or maybe it’s my sister Louise who is dancing. I considered the possibility of the sisters. 

No, I told her with certainty. "It is definitely your mother at work here. She is the artist."

But she was a painter, said Sophia demonstrating use of that ‘but’ word as I had mentioned. And she played piano. She taught art at the college...

Again, I insisted. It’s your mother’s creation. I smiled as I watched a magical performance upon a stage. It’s quite charming too, I told Sophia.

"Wish I could see it, she said. I’m sure it’s one of Cynthia’s productions, although I can’t see her doing a musical. She’s doesn’t do musicals, as a rule."

It wasn’t a musical. Not at all. It was a legacy, really, and I told her so, although she was sure I was mistaken. In fact, she teased that my third eye might have a cataract. When the reading ended, Sophia expressed her gratitude and slowly reached for her jacket. She had not found the answers she had hoped for. As she got up from the sofa, she turned and smiled at me. I watched as she slowly closed the door. That was the first and last time I saw Sophia Deming in physical form.

I must admit that we enjoyed Sophia’s reading far more than she did. I had recorded our lengthy session on a tape. I believe she made a careful transcription of the recording before destructing the tape in fear that her private disclosures would one day be discovered by posterity. Sophia’s family, including her husband, Nigel, held Sophia’s New Age views skeptically, if not contemptuously. Privately, she referred to her notes frequently, studying them with the same contemplation she afforded her dreams until she had all six pages memorized. Sadly, in what most people would consider a confounding stroke of bad luck, Sophia lost the notes. She believed the lost oracles signified that her search for a meaningful, authentic life was fruitless.

Several days following Sophia’s reading, my wife, Catherine, and I left Peterborough to take care of her ailing mother, Rose, on Prince Edward Island. We stayed at Rose’s cottage overlooking the beautiful Northumberland Strait. Our departure proved to be therapeutic. During that time, amidst the pastoral beauty of The Island, as it is called by its residents, Catherine tended lovingly to her mother.  I was able to assist Catherine and to conduct research I had put off for some time. It was a meditative period for both of us, a respite from routine, and an opportunity for creative endeavors.

From the balcony of our second floor bedroom, I prepared the following account of Sophia’s journey, a woman I have seen but once in my life, yet, a woman with whom I maintained an intimate psychic connection for a period of almost two years. I have followed her journey remotely with my senses. I know the signs that guided her along the way. As for the actual events, I admit my account may be an embellishment to some extent, written from afar and realized as plausible, yet, perhaps not completely factual. However, I know the significant events of Sophia’s healing journey as they appeared to me were as true as the island tides outside my window. They are my images of her energy invoked by the same guides who visited me that day in Peterborough. Like Sophia, I heard the singing bird in the Florida room and I weathered the October storm. I was there when Nigel caressed her hands, there, when she broke her sister’s fall, and, like Sophia, I am here to teach what I have learned.

J.E.Burns, Psy.D.

Prince Edward Island

2010

Part One

The Songbird

My first remote encounter with Sophia occurred two weeks following her visit to my office. My wife, Catherine, and I had moved to Prince Edward Island to take care of Rose, her mother. During my stay at Rose’s cottage, I developed the ability to observe images of Sophia from afar, a practice known as remote viewing. Until that time, my psychic abilities were limited to precognition, the ability to sense the future.  I have no doubt that the serenity of the island and its exquisite beauty provided the perfect atmosphere for the expansion of my spiritual awareness. Sophia’s world became evident to me through images and sounds, physical events in my life that alerted me to her presence. The very first of these signals was the voice of a songbird whose whistles accompanied me during a walk on a summer afternoon near Wood Island. As it turned out, the little songster was actually a harbinger of news regarding Sophia. I felt that she too was listening and that perhaps our birds harmonized at either end of the Gulf Stream. It was the first of many such acausal events concerning Sophia.

I envisioned her opening the sliding door to her Florida screen room very slowly, so as not to awaken her husband, Nigel, still asleep in the bedroom. The Florida humidity made Sophia’s heart heavy with homesickness for Canada. (She was sensitive to extremes of any kind.) On this particularly steamy morning, she sat on a wicker chair and opened her newspaper. The trees that surrounded her screen room in the little house in Reynolds Beach, Florida, were now heavy with yellow seedpods. Sophia examined the clusters. She had consulted the Palm Beach Extension to identify the prolific species of tree on her property. The previous owner had called them cottonwoods. The cottonwoods, it turned out, were carrotwoods. The trees, she learned, were high on Florida’s list of invasive species of weed. She was advised to remove the exotic plants before they invaded the coastal mangroves. Her house was virtually surrounded by a legion of carrotwoods that bred prolifically, depositing mini carrotwoods in the flower beds, even between the deck beams. Nigel had said they were lovely and had refused to destroy them. Besides, he explained, the trees provided privacy from the noisy New Yorkers who inhabited the adjacent property.

With a black pen, Sophia studied her daily cryptogram puzzle, accompanied by the persistent mockingbird singing his anthology to the world. After solving for is and his, she filled in the remaining letters of the anagram and read: Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices. Sartre. She placed the paper down. Really, she said.

She surrendered her attention to the calls of her patio companion in the carrotwood tree, the mockingbird. She counted the bird’s tunes and tried to decipher a connection in his repertoire, but there was no pattern. Each one of his songs was distinctly different in pitch, melody, and timing. She wondered what compelled him. He was mournful, thrilled, brooding, and then calm in the space of a minute. With each song, his little breast tugged up and down. For a moment, she whistled along with him, but he didn’t notice her. To live to sing! Sophia confessed to herself that the mockingbird concert was the closest thing to live music she had heard in three years. Worse, his repertoire was more impressive than her own.

She picked up the watering can and headed for the breezeway at the front of the house. A wall of heat hit her face like fire as she stepped outside. I could almost feel it. She surveyed the tired tropical plants, the ones that cost her more in Florida than they did back home in Canada. There was considerable risk in procuring plants in the subtropics, Sophia had learned. If and when they bloomed, they did so with such tired faces, they seemed to plead for rescue. Ultimately, the strain would be too much for them, and Sophia would have to watch their slow death with the despair that her former competence as a gardener and nurse had died along with them.

As Sophia dumped water on the sticks that emerged from their ceramic deathbeds in her breezeway, a puff of cold air from the kitchen turned her attention to Nigel. I pictured his blond head peering out through the door.

Morning, pumpkin. Would you like some tea? he said brightly.

She wiped her forehead. Only an Englishman could tolerate hot tea in this heat, she said. No thanks. She no longer enjoyed tea since moving to Florida.

Sophia poured water over an exhausted ixora plant in the intensive-care section of the garden. A small frog leapt out of the pot and landed on her chest. She let out a scream and a curse word, one of which sent the frog flying as her smiling husband watched with amusement. She dumped the remaining water from the bucket into the face of a poinsettia and entered the kitchen, dripping with sweat. She pulled the sliding door closed with both hands. Nigel was still smirking at her squeamishness as he poured his tea.

Hot one today, he testified. He was a compendium of weather reports. Sophia looked at him with her head tilted, amazed that this tidbit of regularity was worth his mention.

"When is it ever not hot in Florida in the summer, Nigel? It’s the same thing every day."

It’s lovely! exclaimed Nigel, spreading hard butter in little chunks on his toast. Too dry, though. We need rain. He offered her some toast.

No thanks, said Sophia. She was thinking about a course deadline as they headed to the kitchen table. Dry spell, eh? she said. "I remember wading to my car in my black pumps and driving through a no-wake zone on US 1 to get home from work one summer, she said. And I have a pretty good memory of peeking out the hurricane shutters to see that a 170-mile-an-hour breeze had kicked the back shed in pretty good. It was raining, as I recall."

Nigel got up in pursuit of his morning paper. "That was delicious!" he proclaimed. He brought the paper to his base in the living room. Sophia could never understand how her husband preferred to live in a sauna to escape the wet of England. She was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to drum up the energy to study, and leafing through her textbook to find the spot where she had left off when Nigel made an announcement from the living room.

Tom Braden died!  His voice was louder than the New Yorkers’ next door.

She closed her book. Who was he?

I have no idea. He was ninety-six years of age, Nigel read. Sophia waited. Listen to this! he called. Can you hear me?

Yes, I’m listening, Sophia called out, awaiting Nigel’s first report from the Reynolds Beach News. May as well go over to him, she decided. Abandoning her book, she seated herself on the couch next to her husband and listened.

Nigel read the report to his wife. Thomas ‘Tommy’ Braden, a native of Jensen Beach, Florida, a World War II veteran, and owner of Braden’s Hardware, Port Saint Lucie, died on Friday, August 15, at his home in Hobe Sound. Mr. Braden is remembered for his somewhat controversial novelties, which included the popular invention known to Jensen Beach locals as the ‘Snow Bird.’ He looked over his paper at Sophia. Assured that she was still listening, he continued.

The ‘Snow Bird,’ said Nigel, available only from Braden’s Hardware, is a stuffed Florida egret that flips ‘the bird’ when activated by a switch on its belly. The device was marketed to Floridians who were annoyed with snow birds visiting Florida from up north. It seems Mr. Braden developed a particular animosity toward Canadian snow birds when his wife of thirty years left him for a Vancouver marine insurance salesman. Nigel choked out the last few words between spasms of laughter. Brilliant! he concluded.

Is there a picture of him? She wanted to know.

How did you know that? He handed Sophia the paper, grinning widely. Look at this!

Sure enough, there was brazen Braden pictured standing outside Harper’s Bar on Jensen Beach Boulevard holding a can of Miller Lite in one hand and his infamous bad bird in the other, middle finger protruding obscenely with American pride. Old Braden was wearing a broad, satisfied smile that revealed few teeth. A closer examination of the photo revealed that Braden was also wearing a T-shirt that boasted the Canadian flag. The caption read: Braden’s bird fails to shock Canadian visitors. Mr. Braden’s anticipation of Canadian outrage was as fouled as his bird. A pair of beaming lads from Montreal stood on either side of Tommy. They appeared to be quite amused by the creator’s invention, which they held up in salute for the camera.

Sophia watched her husband delight in the discovery of this homespun tale, there in his humble corner of the couch. I imagined him sitting comfortably on a garish beach towel, a fan overhead, two remotes within reach, an odd number of dollar-store reading glasses close by, and a cup of hot tea. Sophia considered his casual nature an inexcusable privilege of the male species, particularly retired ones.

Nige? she asked.

Wait, honey. Listen to this want ad, Nigel remarked excitedly. Wedding dress ... size 2X ... never worn! His face went red from holding back his laughter. She shook her head.

Good one. Sophia imagined an oversized wedding dress and an abandoned bride.

Brilliant! He shook his head. Now, what were you going to say, pumpkin?

Nige, do you think that we would have met each another if we had done one of those online compatibility searches?

I think Nigel appeared to require a moment to adjust to the incongruity of his wife’s remark. Yes, honey, he replied, examining his wife’s face.

Sophia surveyed him closely. Her head was tipped to one side, her green eyes narrowed. Yeah, I think you’re probably right there, she rejoined.

He shifted in his seat and focused intently on his wife’s face yet again, as if to lure her into consciousness. Are you studying today, my little scholar?

Of course I am, she said curtly.

You need to rest, Sophia. Why don’t you take a little nap? urged her husband as he flicked on the TV.

I can’t. There’s too much to do, she said, reaching for the remote. I’m so tired.

I know, sweetie. He stroked her head gently.

I heard an old song the other day, Nige. She turned the volume down. "A Beatles song. I was driving to work. Eight Days a Week. I used to love that old song. It got on my nerves. I had to turn it off."

Eight Days a Week, sang Nigel. Symbolic of your workload, maybe? he remarked. "You don’t have to do this to yourself you know, Sophia. You take on too much. Why don’t you do something else? Look for another job?