In Part One of these spiritual battle snippet posts from The Prodigal Band Trilogy, a battle between the good and evil spiritual forces takes place at a 1995 concert. In Part Two, the battle is between the prodigal band members themselves over whether or not to “call up” the evil Corion and his Demons in a seance-like experience; the Demons had just given them a ‘song’ to record which would aid in the cause of turning the souls of their fans to evil. Since the forces of Good, the Tooters, gave them another song to counteract the Demons’ song, a standoff ensued between good and evil.
In this Part Three, the Tooters will say something rather ‘prophetic’ to the band’s drummer, Tom, who is looking for answers as to why ‘the witch of the Hovels’ (where Tom grew up) would ‘warn’ the band (or as she called them minstrels) about the Demons. ‘Minstrels’ is a medieval term for musicians; the ‘witch’ originally came from medieval times. She ‘warned’ Tom as well as band leader Jack about the Demons as the two as well as the others in the band and their women watched over singer Erik and bassist Keith who had mild heart attacks, and were physically in hospital beds while spiritually in a ‘void’ as the Demons tried to consume their souls. The Tooters, using another method, would also communicate with Erik’s wife Ger, who had ‘betrayed’ him earlier with bulimia she never told him about and having had an ‘affair’ with her personal ‘trainer.’
But first, the snippet featuring drummer Tom, who, looking for answers, encounters the witch of the Hovels, in the Hovels, who gives him a message and a suggestion to ‘ask the Tooters.’ From Chapter Four of The Prophesied Band:
“How could you possibly— And you slipped into the hospital room and only Jack and I saw you. Like, are you the witch of the Hovels I grew up hearing about? Do you really talk to The Tooters and chase away Demons?”
“Yes. And my time left here is short, before the final battle begins. I must leave you now.”
Tom’s mind raced. “But wait! You said I was one of the—what did you call us? Minstrels you survived demons to warn. Could you explain that?”
Her voice faded as she entered a sudden mist of cloud. “Invoke The Tooters of The Creator.”
He began to hyperventilate. Fear. Ignorance. What the hell is going on? What the bloody hell is so bloody special about us?
After minutes, he calmed himself and continued on his trek to The Tooters.
He stood humbly before them inside the north gate.
“What did the old woman mean when she told me that we were minstrels she survived demons to warn?”
After minutes of his pleading for an answer, The Tooters told him nothing. Nothing in his head. I should have known it wouldn’t work!
But then a voice spoke to his mind. “You must first believe. Your faith will open your mind. Sincere faith. You will know the answers then.”
The rest of the snippets feature Ger, who does not believe anything about the legend of the Tooters, but keeps hearing a ‘voice’ in her head that she thinks is the voice of her friend Laurie, Jack’s woman. As I previously said, she had supposedly ‘betrayed’ her man Erik by not being completely honest with him, and in Chapter Nine of Battle of the Band, he had left her, and their two children as well. She badly wanted him back and would do anything to get him back. When they met again in Erik’s home city of Walltown as the band was completing a video there, he continued to brush her off and she was at her wit’s end about it. Laurie and Keith’s woman Jarris tried to console her. Near the alley (within the Hovels), the women gather. Laurie asks Ger if she talked to Erik, and so it goes, from Chapter Ten of Battle of the Band.
Her (Ger’s) thoughts were interrupted by a hand on her shoulder. “Did you talk to him?” Laurie asked.
“He wouldn’t listen to me!”
Jarris put her arm around Ger’s waist and kissed her in commiseration. “I’m so sorry, girl. You don’t deserve what he’s doing to you.”
Ger looked into Jarris’ green eyes. Maybe I do, Jarris. Maybe I’ve taken him for granted all these years. Yes, I admit it now. I have been. I do deserve it!
Laurie’s mind answered. No! You don’t deserve it! Jack screwed me over once—and he regretted it. And Erik will regret his hate, he will!
Ger backed away from Jarris and looked apprehensively at Laurie. “What did you say, Lau?”
The tall blonde expressed shocked surprise. “Nothing, Ger. I didn’t say anything.”
Ger’s eyebrows went up. “Really? I thought I heard you.”
Jarris reassured her. “You’re hearing things, Ger. Laurie didn’t utter a word.”
But “Laurie’s mind’ answering was not actually Laurie’s mind that answered! Yet in this next snippet, as Erik lay in a hospital bed about to be defibrillated out of a mild heart attack, she again thinks she hears Laurie’s voice calling to her to call to Erik who is within the spiritual realm called ‘the void.’ Actually, her mind calls to him, telling him to return to her, for she has ‘repented’ of her ‘betrayal’ and now wants to save his life. From Chapter Ten of Battle of the Band:
In hospital
Seven seconds later, a paddle-shock from the defibrillator. Nothing.
Beyond frantic, Ger thought in a wave of desperation. If I could only touch him! I could reach him! If I could—
But she couldn’t touch him, touch his bed or do anything but wail in the arms of Jack and Laurie until defibrillation had ceased. She wept in their caring arms.
Yell to him! As loud as your love-soul might! Tell him how much you love him! Ger thought she heard Laurie whisper in her ear.
Tell him what?
How much do you love him, Ger?
Ger broke down in tortured sobs as Almighty Love consumed her soul. More than life itself!
The voice continued. Then yell it with all your heart! Yell it across the plane of consciousness! It’s the only way he’ll hear you!
Ger looked up toward Heaven. Erik! I can’t go on without you! I’ll do anything. Anything! Even if I have to give my life to bring you back, I will! I promise! I promise!
And, her calling him worked as defibrillation brought him back to heart beat life. And then Jarris, in a different way, saves her Keith as he is also defibrillated. Yet on the following evening while the singer and bassist recover in hospital, Ger still wants to know about ‘that voice,’ because Jarris has insisted that voice is not Laurie’s voice. They are within the town house of Jarris’s mother and sister that she has bought for them, in a parkside area close to where the Tooters statue resides across the way at the other end of Victoria Park. From Chapter Four of The Prophesied Band:
“I don’t know what my problem is.” Ger stared out from a bay window in the parlor, toward the small park across the street. Then across the park, across the wide thoroughfare, across Victoria Park. The Tooters stood. She couldn’t resist looking toward them.
“I heard Laurie speaking to me last night. It was her voice, Jarris.” A quick turn. “But Lau said she hardly uttered a word! As the technicians and doctors defibrillated Erik, she told me how I could bring him back to life. But she insists she didn’t!”
Jarris sat at the bay window facing Ger. “What exactly did she say?”
“I said, ‘Thanks, Lau, for telling me to mind-yell to Erik to return to life.’ Exactly. And she said, ‘Ger, I didn’t even talk to you during that time. I was too scared to talk.’ I said, ‘But I heard you speak into my ear.’ And then she said, ‘You were only imagining that.’ Now Lau’s never lied to me, eh? Am I just too stressed out, or am I crazy?”
The other raised her eyebrows. “You’re not crazy, because the same thing happened earlier that day. Remember after you tried to talk with Erik and he went away and I put my arm around you? I told you how sorry I was, that you didn’t deserve what he was doing to you. You looked at me as if you were thinking over what I said. And suddenly you looked at Lau and asked, ‘What did you say, Lau?’ She said, ‘Nothing, Ger.’ You responded, ‘I thought I heard you.’ That’s when I said, ‘You’re hearing things.’ This is the same kind of thing, eh? I just think your mind’s talking to you, but in Laurie’s voice.”
Exasperated, Ger asked, “But why the hell would I do that?”
“Because you want assurance from someone else. Maybe you don’t trust your own judgement. I dunno.” Shrug. “Who knows? You’re looking toward The Tooters, eh? Maybe they spoke to you.” Reassuring smile.
In the final snippet, pop culture pundit Jay Elliot, the narrator of The Prophesied Band, is interviewing Ger by the Tooters statue at the north end of Victoria Park several hours before her Erik and the rest of Sound Unltd take the stage at night to wind up the annual Walltown Music and Trade Festival, and annual event, with this one being the supreme one, in July, 2000. Hundreds of thousands of fans will witness a miracle of sorts (which will be featured in Part Four, next week, of this spiritual battle set of random snippets) as Erik and the others are given, by the Tooters, their ‘missions of God.’ The ‘witch’ had told the six they’d be given these missions by the Tooters at the festival, but not exactly when this would happen. Part Four provides the details. Ger knows this, but does not expect the Tooters to actually ‘message’ her during the interview. The ‘message’ has to do with her pregnancy, for she will soon have a third child, a son named Jason, who will be born a few months later. From Chapter Ten of The Prophesied Band:
Then she accidentally glanced at The Tooters and turned somber.
“Erik called it a mission. Of God. Or something. And this statue is going to reveal something.” Back to me. “I don’t understand it. I don’t believe all that Tooters legend stuff. But he seems to, now. He’s done a lot of changing these past couple of years, and now this.” Then she turned back to The Tooters’ heads and trumpets calling the sky, and whimsically asked them, “What in the world do you want from us, anyway?”
I saw Ger, with a frightened gaze and gasps, step back a few paces.
“What we want from you, Ger, is to believe what we will tell you. A warning. Do not let anyone except your loved ones and your doctors touch your baby inside you.”
She held her head as if trying to get something out of it. Scared and out of control.
Those voices, like the ones who spoke to her in February, 1996. For sure, the voices weren’t Laurie’s.
She turned away from me and whispered so I could barely hear, “Leave me alone! Why you telling me this?”
The voices answered, “Because, Ger, we want your baby safe. We want you to believe in what Erik is about to do.”
“But I don’t believe in you!” she loudly whispered.
“You are a skeptic, yes. But soon you will know your way to salvation. You must heed our warning whether you believe in us or not. Let only your family touch the baby.”
The voices stopped. She began to sob uncontrollably as if her safe world in the rarified upper strata was crashing down upon her.
I walked over to her. “What just happened, Ger? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
She shook her head furiously. “No! Like I just heard one! I think—I think The Tooters spoke to me! I asked them what they wanted of us, and they answered, Jay. I didn’t imagine it!” Rubbed her growing belly for reassurance and comfort. “They said I mustn’t let anyone but Erik and my family and doctors touch the baby.” Heavy breathing, as if running from fright.
“Why? Is your baby in danger?” Never mind the fact that she told me The Tooters just spoke to her.
“No! It’s not!” Calmer. “Not that I know of. I eat right, I don’t drink, stopped smoking, eh? And for the first time that I’m pregnant, Erik is happy.” Smiled. “He now knows what it’s like to be a daddy, the joy. I’m so proud of him.”
Ger has no idea at the time of ‘the danger,’ but in The Prodigal Band, Erik figures it out in time through divine guidance.
Hopefully, the next post will be put up next week.
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The Prodigal Band Trilogy © 2019 by Deborah Lagarde, Battle of the Band © 1996 by Deborah Lagarde, The Prophesied Band © 1998 by Deborah Lagarde and The Prodigal Band © 2018 by Deborah Lagarde. Permission needed to copy any materials off this page.
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