EXCERPT
From the Introduction
There was just a glint of sweat on his bald forehead. I resisted the urge to take my napkin and dab it. We smiled at each other as we took a bite of our breakfast cereal and sipped our coffee. We were happy—or at least looked happy—as man and wife. I was glad I’d remembered to have my nails done. We dipped our spoons into the milk again and then started to chew.
“CUT!” a voice yelled. The man and I both leaned over and spit out our partially chewed Cap’n Crunch cereal into a bucket and laughed.
I turned to my pretend husband and said, “Hey, I wish it had crunch berries in it.”
“Me too,” he said. “By the way, my name is Mike.”
“Nice to meet you, husband Mike.” We were on a sound stage at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood and it was business as usual, spitting out product in between shots for a cereal commercial.
The assistant director removed the bucket and said, “Ok, will our on-set talent, Marla and Mike, please take your positions again?” I picked up my spoon and then the room shifted and blurred. I went blind to where I was. I no longer saw the spoon, the lights, the camera, or the set of the commercial shoot. All I could see now was a bedroom at night. There was a baby crib and a mobile slowly moving over it. Everything was calm and serene in this psychic movie that had started to play out in my head, and then I heard, “Tell him it’s me, Fred, Fred!”
The assistant director yelled from behind the camera. “MARLA, are you ready?” My mind immediately snapped out of the vision I was having.
“Yes!” I said. “Yes, I’m ready.” I sat up straight, adjusted my suit, and got back into my commercial acting mode. I wanted to make an excuse for not paying attention, but in my mind I was being guided into a child’s room and I wanted to go back into those images and find out who Fred was.
Mike leaned in, touched my arm and asked, “Are you okay?” As soon as Mike did that, I heard, “Tell him I watch him read the blue book every night to his son.”
“Hold up,” said the director. “We need to reposition the camera. Talent, just sit tight—this will only take a few minutes.”
I sat there wondering, should I tell Mike? This talking to the dead business, if that’s what was really going on, was something very new to me. I had been highly skeptical of anyone who claimed to be able do it, but I had been forced into dealing with it myself, and here on the set it was happening again. I stared at the Cap’n Crunch floating around in my bowl and felt a surge of love move through me. Then it just popped out. “Mike, do you have a baby boy?”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“Mike, I don’t know how to say this since we just met, but I’m one of those people who somehow is able to talk with the dead, and I have a guy here named Fred who wants to talk to you.”
His reply was immediate. “Oh, my God, Fred is my dad’s name and he died a year ago. What’s he saying?”
I said, “Your father shows me a bedroom with a crib. He’s pointing to the crib and saying, I watch him read the blue book every night to the baby. Does this mean anything to you?”
Mike’s eyes welled up. “Yes, I have a newborn son. I’ve been so upset that my dad wasn’t here for his birth. And yeah, I read from a book that’s blue! I read the book Rainbow Fish every night to my son.” We were both in tears.
How did this happen? Did the dead set it up, casting Mike and me together on a national television commercial so Mike’s deceased father could communicate with him? Was the love between Mike and his dad so strong that God facilitated this?
These interventions had taken over my life. In fact, they were more deep and meaningful than my day job as an actress. How did my life get to look like this? Me, a Pennsylvania feed salesman/pig farmer’s daughter who survived the danger in my home and later in the world of national and international mobsters and then landed in Hollywood and balanced sitcoms, spirits, and a stalker. I was on the ride of my life. Dead people, murder, Hollywood heartthrobs, sex, psychic visions, and UFOs were all a part of it. I found myself catapulted and positioned into situations with psychic awareness and messages from deceased loved ones to assist people from all walks of life—including the most
skeptical . . .
****
“So, what do you think you can do for me?” he asked, leaning back in the chair and folding his arms over his well-defined chest. The word Detective was emblazoned on the nameplate on his desk, and it seemed that he was doing his best to suppress his skepticism.
I sat up straight and composed myself to convey how sane I was as I explained one of the “unique” things I do. “When it comes to homicides, I like to hold crime scene photos,” I said. “By holding the photo, I access information about what happened before and after the picture was taken. Sometimes I experience the events from the victim’s point of view, and sometimes I can get inside the head of the perpetrator.”
“How did this ability come about?” he asked.
“I’ve been assessing dangerous situations pretty much all my life. I can feel it, see it. I guess it comes easy to me, even without wearing a badge.” I smiled.
“You just hold an object?” he asked incredulously.
“That’s one way it works for me.”
“Can you read anything?”
“Pretty much.”
He pulled the left sleeve of his dark blue suit up over his forearm, popped the white cuff of his shirt, and revealed a silver bracelet on his tanned wrist. The bracelet was just as stunning as he was. He smiled and handed it to me. “Ok, what do you see with this?”
The chain was warm and smooth. “I see a beautiful, honey-skinned woman with long blonde hair gave this to you as a present.”
“Yes, she’s my wife,” he laughed.
“I see a white marble bathroom with a separate shower and tub.”
“Yes, that’s my bath at home.”
“You’ve got a white towel wrapped low around your waist and you’re standing in front of the mirror flexing your biceps. Now you’re squatting deeply, turning to admire your quads. You’re rubbing them hard and then you—”
He snatched the bracelet out of my hands. “That’s enough! I have a case for you.”