She frowned, then stood after tapping her computer panel to turn off the flat screen. “If it was genetic you would have had some kind of mind abilities when you were younger. Did you?”
“Nope.” I stood aside as she moved out from the desk.
“Well, the white light flash in your mind says something happened yesterday morning. Maybe your brain took until you were 70 to get to a point where these powers would manifest themselves.”
I grunted. “Do you believe that?”
“What I believe is irrelevant. But the data we obtained today are unique. I have to study the scans and tACS readouts more intensively.” She stopped before the door to the hallway. Then gave me a grin. “I gather you are on a tight budget. Would you like to join me for a late lunch, then I can drive you back to the train depot. You did come down here on the train, right?”
“I did.” Why was my low budget status so obvious? Maybe the fact my leather shoes were dinged and scratched while my beige khaki pants had a few small holes in the knees had clued her. “As for lunch, yeah. Do we eat at the student center?”
She shook her head and opened the door. “I’m taking you to the University Club on Las Lomas. It’s just for faculty, staff and guests. And you are my special guest!”
I did not feel special. I felt like a lab rat released to run outdoors before returning to its cage. For sure Claudia would want me to come back and submit to more tests. I’d never liked medical testing, though most tests did perform usual functions. They caught Leroy’s diabetes before he lost any fingers or toes. The nutritionist had warned Petros of the need to cut his carbs and increase his veggies and meat intake. Still, this attractive woman who knew more about brains and brain testing than I ever expected to learn was comfortable to be with. I might return. Maybe the blood she had taken before injecting me with the radionuclide would tell her something about my DNA and heredity that would explain my mind powers. I needed answers. At least coming here had given me one answer. I could heal. Taking her burnt hand in my hand had been instinct. Feeling healing energies flow down my arm and into her hand had been wild. What else could I do when I acted on impulse, versus planning ahead? Beyond melting people and burning them up? Or tossing them through the air? How else could I affect the world around me and the people in it? Food for thought for sure.
“Here, Jack, climb into my car. We’ll get to the club faster.”
I smiled and nodded as she walked around to the driver’s side of her white Cadillac CTS-V with hood intake. “Sure. Thanks for the ride.” I opened the door and sat next to her. The rich smell of leather filled the car’s interior. “Comfy. I like.”
She smiled as she tapped a button to turn on the engine. The V-8 hummed to life with a subdued roar. “One of the benefits of being in demand. UNM wanted me bad. Promised me a full tenure-track professorship if I came here from Helsinki. Plus they said they’d make my car payment. So I said yes. And grabbed this baby.” She tapped the leather-wrapped steering wheel. “The Finance department person gasped when they got the first monthly billing from the dealership.”
“So UNM owns the car but you drive it?”
“Exactly.” She twisted the wheel and we backed out of her parking spot like we were hornets on wheels. “Hang on!”
I hung on.
It’s amazing how fast a Caddy sports car can go on interior university roads. And how well its traction and suspension work when turning corners. Plenty of students looked on with surprise as we made our way to the University Club. I decided then and there to visit Claudia at least one more time. For sure she would pick me up at the train station. And I would enjoy a rocket ride through downtown Albuquerque!
Claudia left me off in front of the downtown train station on busy 1st Street Southwest. She even pulled into the parking loop between the station and the Greyhound bus station to the south. I waved by to her, then took the walkway at the south end of the station that led under a roofed overhang and up to the elevated level of the tracks. I went upstairs that led to the actual tracks. Looking around I saw a few people with suitcases and shopping bags waiting under a roofed waiting area to my left. The train would not leave for another thirty minutes or so. I looked right and saw the tracks running south past the bus station. Deciding exercise was the healthy choice after eating a New York Strip steak, a salad, a baked potato and some cherry pie at Claudia’s club, I headed south along the paved track that ran between the tracks and the low wall that fronted all the buildings along this side of the track.
Early spring in Albuquerque was nice. Patches of white clouds floated overhead. The turquoise blue sky seemed endless. And the honks and squeaks of cars and trucks rushing around this part of downtown Albuquerque were muted. The slight wind that blew made the 75 degree day cooler than usual. Which made me appreciate my black hoodie that covered me from the waist up. I did not have any fellow pedestrians either, which I liked. When I hit Lead Avenue SW I stepped onto the rough ground that lay between the street and the southern wing of the bus station. A few buses were parked there under the long-roofed archway and people had gathered for boarding. Since I usually avoided busy sidewalks, I turned sharp right and walked along the paved area just below the divider wall, which lay five feet above my head. There was a narrow walk space between the divider wall and the eastern façade of the station. Where there was an exit door in the middle of the façade, it was chained on the outside. Clearly the station folks wanted people to access the buses from the west side. As a result the narrow walkway had scattered litter of plastic pop bottles, food wrappings and stubbed out cigarettes. No one was in view and looking along the narrow track I could see the southeast corner of the train station up ahead. Good enough.
The smell of feces hit my nose. Some homeless person had taken a dump here, counting on the isolation from public view to allow for dropping one’s pants. I moved closer to the divider wall and made sure my feet did not encounter anything that stank like sewer gas. That attention on the ground and my feet was an error.
“Give me your wallet. Now!”
I stopped and looked up.
An Anglo guy with a grey-streaked goatee wearing worn camo pants and shirt, with a green t-shirt underneath, was pointing a revolver at me. The gun’s shape suggested a .38. Which was deadly enough. His right hand shook as it held the gun. His open mouth showed rotten teeth and red sores on his tongue. He looked miserable. This was not the usual homeless guy or gal. They mostly avoided people unless you were driving past a main intersection. There they stood with black-lettered signs asking for help. The times I’d given a few bucks to a homeless person they had said “God bless and thank you!”
I stood still and thought hurriedly about how to handle this rotten piece of humanity.
“Hey, you could get more money from selling that revolver than I have in my wallet. Why not try a pawn shop?”
The middle-aged man snarled low. “You fucking pile of shit! I don’t need your lip. Give me your wallet.” He shook the end of the pistol at me. “And there had better be credit cards in there!”
Once again my desire for solitude had led me into trouble. Damn. The Rail Runner train was arriving, creating a metal-on-metal clatter that was louder than our talking. Which left me with few choices. I was not about to be a victim. But I did not want to kill again.
“Why don’t we both agree this never happened? You walk away and I will walk back to the buses?”
He sneezed loud. Gray buggers dripped from his arched nose. Redness around his eyes made his brown eyes appear haunted. He lifted the pistol and aimed it at my chest.
“One less geezer in the world!”
He fired.
“Kaboom!”
The blasting sound of the bullet exiting the gun’s muzzle hit me like a hurricane. All of me came alive. Alive in a way I’d never felt. Except maybe yesterday morning. All of my senses were expanded. Vision, smell, hearing, touch, smell and taste. I tasted the odor of black powder. I smelled it. And somehow I could see th
e bullet. A narrow gray slug moving fast toward me. Time seemed to slow. My sense of my body in reality also changed.
If I stepped aside someone waiting at a bus behind me might be hurt. Or someone in a car driving along Lead Avenue might be hit.
It was too late to wave at him and knock the rotten asshole into the bus station wall.
Time slowed. The bullet slowed. I did not breathe.
My mind reached out and enveloped the bullet.
I realized suddenly I did not need to wave at a person to make them fly away from me.
I only needed thought.
And thinking is faster than a bullet.
Thinking upward.
The bullet curved up and passed over my head.
It would rise up hundreds of feet into the robins-egg blue sky below gravity took hold and brought it dropping down. Odds favored it hitting the roof of a building before touching anything alive.
Which left me with a rotten excuse for a human.
Flames yellow and red filled my mind.
Instead of starting at the feet of the deadly killer, this time the flames enveloped all of him at once.
His red-rimmed eyes widened in shock.
His tongue moved slightly.
Shock showed on his unshaven face.
His straggly beard became white-yellow as the hair caught fire.
His camo clothes became flame almost instantly.
Beneath the clothing his flesh burned.
I breathed in.
Reality hit me like a car smashing into a wall.
I bent forward from the non-physical blow of time resuming its normal march forward. A wave of heat blasted my face from the fireball that had been a person. The smell of burning flesh torn into my nose. I even tasted the piggy flavor of roasted human. Goddess!
I blinked. Looked down.
What had been a human was now a pile of black ash, red-scorched bones and a few pieces of metal from whatever kind of shoes Mr. Killer had worn. Plus his scorched pistol.
I exhaled and stood straighter.
Normal sounds came to me from the rear, from ahead, from the right as people chatted while boarding the train.
The train.
Glancing at my watch I realized I had ten minutes to reach the train and board it.
Looking ahead I saw the station building and the walkway under the bus pull-ins that served the train passengers.
Lifting my feet and giving thanks there were no obvious cameras on this side of the Greyhound station, I walked forward. My leather shoes landed on the pile of black ash that had been a human. The ash flew sideways. I walked forward.
My mind felt at peace.
Which felt strange.
Killing a person, even a diseased deadly killer like the Anglo who had hidden in the narrow walkway ready for a single victim to come his way, should not feel . . . peaceful.
I licked my dry lips. Then spit to rid my tongue of the flesh flavor. And I breathed fast to clear my lungs of the odor. I told myself it had been unavoidable. The bullet would have killed me if I had not deflected it. And made sure no one else would be hurt.
People appeared ahead of me, walking along the walkway that led to the concrete stairs that led up past the divider wall and out to the rail tracks. I looked up. The red image of a Roadrunner bird filled my view of the side of the train. It was time for me to travel home. Home to Santa Fe. Home to my apartment. Home, my refuge.
Today had been too eventful.
I needed to think. And feel. And wonder. And figure out if any answer to my powers would ever make me feel guilty about killing another human.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning was Thursday. The third day since I’d had a white flash that seemed to give me psychic powers. After coffee and a hearty breakfast at Café Loco I caught the Peralta bus and made my way over to the Railyard. I walked down Manhattan Avenue until I hit Camino de la Familia, then turned left on it. A short ways down the camino I turned right into a narrow path that led to the New Age bookstore The Ark. It’s an old, roomy house shaped in a long rectangle. I’d visited it six years ago when I was researching Buddhism as a possible focus for my spiritual beliefs. The Ark is full of metaphysical books, crystals of all colors and types, smudging bundles, cauldrons, incense from everywhere, and friendly staff, mostly women. Coming out of the path that was framed by green plants on either side I hit the small parking area in front of the main entrance. It was 9 a.m. and there were only two cars to be seen. It being Thursday in the middle of the week, that made sense.
I pushed open the wooden door, walked in a few feet and turned left. A long glass counter runs down that side of the house. The counter contains all kinds of carved animal objects, crystal mountings, specialty jewelry and so forth. Atop the counter sat an old-fashioned manual cash register. Standing behind the register was the older woman who had opened the place 35 years ago. I recalled her name was Stella. A brunette nearly as tall as me, Stella had a relaxed, friendly manner about her that I had appreciated six years ago. She was looking away from me at something on a rear shelf. But when I walked up, she jumped, then turned around suddenly, her gray eyes wide open. As if astonished.
“Wow! Uh, um, can I help you? Sir?”
I glanced to either side of us. To my right a woman customer in her fifties was poking through a shelf of books in the farthest room, about 30 feet away. On my left a second staff person, a young guy wearing a green Earth Day t-shirt was heading for the farthest room, a place where people often stood and read passages from spiritual themed books. Behind me was the central rear room that was filled with crystal displays of all types and statues of Buddha, Quai Lin and other Asia deities. The long front room was quiet. No background music. Peaceful it was. I sniffed. The milky scent of sandalwood incense drifted on the room’s air. I smiled at Stella.
“I was looking for a good book on types of psychic powers and how to . . . control them?”
Stella’s light brown eyebrows rose as she looked appraisingly at me. “That makes sense, considering your, uh, um, aura.”
I focused on Stella’s expression. She acted as if she knew something about me that I didn’t know. “My aura? I saw it on Google as one of the types of psychic powers, or energy fields most people exhibit. But I can’t see auras. You can?”
Stella gave me a quick half-smile. “Well, when you came in just now this entire room lit up with your aura. Kind of like being in a shadowed place when suddenly a searchlight comes on. It washes out everything else.”
This was something new about me. I had no idea my new powers resulted in an aura visible to some people. “Interesting. What do you see when you look at my aura?”
Stella turned serious. “Power. Immense power. Your inner aura is orange-red, the color of pure energy. Next is light green, the hue of nature. The middle aura is bluish, which indicates a spiritual side. A purple layer is associated with healing and cleansing. Your outermost aura is magnolia flower white. The power of transcendence. It’s . . . it’s as bright as the midday Sun,” she said, blinking fast, then focusing in on my face.
“Wow.” I wondered what to do or say now. “Well, uh, Stella, I was here six years ago. To get a book on Buddhism. Do you recall seeing an aura like this on me back then?”
She shook her head, causing her light brown curls to whisper over her slim shoulders. “Nope. While I don’t recall every visitor we’ve had, I would have recalled anyone who walked in shining like you do. You are . . . you are the first person to visit here with this kind of aura.” Stella paused, then leaned forward. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you?”
That was a question I’d been asking myself ever since the events of Tuesday morning. “I’m a 70 year-old geezer in search of answers about . . . about psychic powers that suddenly descended on me like rain in the desert.”
Instead of the false smile or cautious nod that most people give to someone who makes an outrageous statement, Stella just nodded quickly, her gaze scanning me from
head to toe and back up to my face. “That sounds like a big load to deal with. What kind of powers are you trying to control? Or better, understand and deal with? Psychic powers are really not subject to control. They just are. The rare people with powers find the powers just happen when needed. Is that what you are dealing with?”
Damn. This woman who could see auras had hit exactly on my problem. I glanced around and saw no one was within hearing distance of our conversation. What could I tell her that would not result in her calling the cops? Or trying to get me onto national TV?
“Stella, some of the powers I now have are rather . . . deadly when used. One power I can share is easy to see.” I looked at the register that lay between her and me. It was not bolted to the glass countertop. I thought of it lifting upward a few inches. On impulse I gestured at it, as if encouraging it to rise like a bird.
It rose six inches and hovered there.
Stella’s eyes widened. Then she gulped and let out a held-in breath. “Ohhh, that is wonderful! Uh, please restore my register to where it was.”
I thought of the register lowering down slowly. It sank slowly, coming to rest on the rubber mat that cushioned the glass underneath. I shrugged. “Do you have any books that deal with authentic powers? As opposed to the fake psychic surgery and spoon-bending stuff I’ve seen discredited on TV?”
Stella winced, then focused intently on me. Her half-smile was back. “It is true that there are plenty of scammers out there who use conjuring or magic tricks to appear to have psychic powers. But there are some healers who do help people heal from wounds. And while the spoon-bending was indeed fake, that does not apply to causing objects to move. Like my register. Though to be honest, the one other time I saw anyone move an object by thought was a feather. And that was in a friend’s home after a round of toking on some good weed.” She smiled softly.
I noticed a scar on the palm of Stella’s right hand. It was old, not recent. I held out my hand. “Stella, would you shake my hand? I want to try something. It will not hurt.”
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