by Matt Hilton
“I don’t know about auric lights, but I’ve done something similar where you bring your two index fingers close to your nose and you can see a little chipolata sausage between them.”
Broom grunted. “You’re not taking things seriously, are you?”
Sitting up, I said, “I don’t have to lie down to see these lights Broom. All I have to do is haze out my vision. Wallop! There you go.”
I was watching geysers of lemon fire erupt from Broom. Instinct told me that the lemon was an expression of fear of losing control. Blinking the colours away, I said, “I think it’s all the time I’ve spent in front of mirror’s searching for evidence that Cash really is inside me that has heightened my ability for seeing the auras. When I think back, I’ve had the ability for some time now, I just didn’t recognise it for what it was. To be honest, I thought my eyes were just tired and out of focus.”
The bed creaked beneath Broom’s weight as he sat next to me. Maybe he was feeling redundant because I’d already surpassed him in both my knowledge and skill with seeing the lights. He exhaled, and I could practically detect the cogs whirring away in his brain as he pondered.
“A few hours ago,” he said softly, “you made out that I was a crank for even suggesting the theories about the Zone Point Field, and yet, here you are now, telling me that, well, not only do you believe it, but that you have known about your ability all along.”
“I didn’t know about it. Okay, I suspected there was something there. How could I not suspect when I’m aware of my brother’s spirit floating around inside me? I had a feeling, an inkling, but I didn’t understand what the hell it was.” I swung my legs off the bed so that I was sitting alongside him. “After what I’ve seen today, how could I possibly deny that I believe in it?”
His eyebrows performed a little jig of acquiescence.
“Earlier,” I went on. “When I was hiding in the crags at Trowhaem, I looked across the camp. I could see everyone’s auras. To me they were like fireworks going off everywhere. Funny thing is…” I paused, wondering if I should voice this next part.
Broom looked at me. “Go on.”
“Thing is,” I repeated. “I could identify each and every one of them. Put their auras to individual people.”
“What, like you knew their names and such?”
“No. Of course not.” It was my turn to ponder. After ordering my words, I said, “People I’ve already met - Shelly and Bob for instance - I could pick them out from the others. It was like I simply looked at their colours and instinct told me who they were. Because of the same instinct I was able to sift everything else aside and I found Janet. She was actually inside a caravan but I could still see her colours. How weird is that?”
“Beyond weird,” Broom said. “Utterly fantastic.”
“But it happened,” I said, sounding like a small child telling tall-tales. “I know it sounds hard to believe, but I can’t deny it.”
“Neither should you,” Broom said. “You should embrace it. Accept your gift. Can you imagine what this could mean to you?”
“What? A job in a sideshow?” I laughed without feeling remotely funny. “No. I see where you’re coming from. But there’s something else I have to tell you about. Something even I’m finding it hard to accept.”
“You should know by now that I’m very open minded, Carter. Tell me. I promise you I’ll take it at more than face value.”
“When she was being attacked by the Skeklar, I heard Janet call out to me.” I looked at him for signs of reproof but got none. “I don’t mean audibly heard her. I mean in here.” I tapped my head. “I was too far away to hear her for real. I also answered her, and Broom, I think that she heard me, too.”
And it was that conversation, plus the theories of psychic power, crisis apparitions and plain old coincidence that we bandied back and forth, that led me to a point where I was once more lying on the bed with my eyes half closed while I probed the shadowy places of the island with my roving astral spirit.
It was one weird and eventful day, I’ll tell you. And it was about to get even weirder.
THIRTYNINE
The Dungeon
Bethany woke up to the drumming of a marching band. Snare drum competed with bass, and the clash of a cymbal overwhelmed everything. She sat up, her breath catching in her throat. Her mind conjured images from her book of fairy tales. Had a handsome prince come at the head of an army to liberate her from the ogre’s tower?
She blinked back the foggy tendrils of sleep.
The drums now sounded more like the rattle of pebbles on a tin sheet. The cymbal was the crash of surf on boulders. There was no army. No handsome prince.
Yet there still remained the ogre’s tower.
Not that it was much of a tower. More a hut, really. But it was as solid as any bastion the heroes of her stories had ever assailed. It was as damp and smelly and uncomfortable as anything that any ogre would build. Except for an ogre like Shrek. She didn’t think Shrek would build a place as awful as this dungeon.
Bethany was thirsty.
Earlier the Skeklar had come to her. He didn’t speak. He came through the door all hunched over and flashing his green eyes at her. Bethany hid in the shadows at the corner of the room until he was gone again. Only after the door was locked and she heard the scrape of his feet walking away did she peel her fingers from her face and look for what he had brought.
There were two bottles of spring water and a bag of cheesy Wotsits. Beth didn’t like cheesy Wotsits but she liked water. She drank a full litre. Only afterwards did she wonder if the water was poisonous. Had the ogre - no, the Skeklar - laced her water with poison and was waiting for her to die in mouth-frothing agony?
After that she sat for a long, long time, listening to the inner-rhythms of her body, trying to detect the signs that a vile source of corruption ate away at her insides. In the end, all she detected was an intense and urgent need to pee.
There was no toilet, not even a bucket, and though it was loathsome, she finally squatted in a corner of the room and peed onto the gravel. But that was ages ago.
Now she looked for the second bottle of water. She’d moved it away to the wall next to the door, as far away from her toilet corner as possible. She moved through the darkness as though at home with the night. Her fingers reached out for the bottle and closed round the tapered neck.
Something rustled.
“Who’s there?”
Beneath the drum roll of rain - ah, that’s what the noise is! - her voice was barely discernible. She tried again. First sucking in a deep breath in order to empower her shout.
“Who is there?”
No one answered. Neither did she hear the rustle again. She began to think she’d imagined it first time round. No, she hadn’t imagined it. Her mind was a fertile playground for all things weird and wonderful, but she wasn’t daft. She didn’t hear things the way crazy people did.
“What if it’s rats?” she wondered aloud. Now there was something guaranteed to make this dungeon the worst kind of hell hole even her furtive imagination could conjure. “Please don’t let it be rats.”
Her mind flitted to where her nightmare had begun. She thought about her brother Jimmy and tears moistened her eyes. She thought of how much she loved him. Ma often told Jimmy off for being vindictive and spiteful towards Beth, but she wished he were with her now. Alive and vindictive and spiteful, even if she didn’t fully understand what those words meant. She wanted him back more than anything, even if it was Jimmy who’d killed that poor wee bird, and brought the Skeklar out of his hole in the earth to punish them both.
Her mind filled with the terror on Jimmy’s face, as he’d saw the Skeklar standing behind her. She remembered how he’d tried to make her run, and how she couldn’t and how Jimmy had got between the Skeklar and her. Jimmy was neither vindictive nor spiteful towards her then. He’d been her big brother, and he had tried to protect her. And he’d died.
If only Jimmy had left the bir
d alone like she’d warned him.
A single droplet of blood had shivered on the bird’s beak.
A thousand droplets of blood had sprayed from Jimmy’s throat.
Now she was stuck, listening for a rustling thing in the Skeklar’s prison.
Fear engulfed her.
What if the rustle were the wings of the dead bird? A zombie bird come back to taunt her for having such a vindictive and spiteful brother?
What if the rustle was Jimmy? All his bits dragging themselves back together, forming into a shapeless heap so that he could go on tormenting her? She wanted Jimmy back, but not like that! Never like that!
Her groping fingers found the source of the rustle.
“Oh, thank God. It’s only my Wotsits!”
How daft is a crazy person, any way? She had been terrified by the sound of a maize snack falling over when she’d disturbed them by lifting the bottle of water.
Suddenly she loved cheesy Wotsits.
Not enough to eat them, yet, but enough to lift them up and hold them to her chest as if they were a talisman against this evil place.
She couldn’t begin to fathom how long she’d been here. It had easily been a lifetime. Sleep had come and gone twice now, but she still couldn’t guess how long each slumber had lasted. If the first time had been for a hundred years, then maybe the second one was, too. Only, that was faintly ridiculous even to her fertile mind. If it was true, she would be two hundred and eight years old, and she knew even without feeling herself that she was still a little girl. Unless the water wasn’t poisoned, but had been mixed with an elixir of eternal youth?
“Nah, that’s just silly,” she told herself. “You can’t mix stuff with Wotsits and make them last a hundred years. By now they’d be all mushy.”
So, she hadn’t slept a century each time. More than likely she’d only been asleep for a short time. The hard ground wasn’t the most comfortable of beds that you could sleep that long on it, and her need to eat and drink and pee would be much, much stronger if she’d been here for two hundred years.
She drank only a single mouthful of water. Determined this time that she wouldn’t be forced to squat in a corner like her pet hamster, Nibbles. Then her thirst got the better of her and she supped down half the bottle. Pangs dug at her stomach, and she realised that she was hungrier than she thought. Maybe cheesy Wotsits weren’t as nasty as she remembered. In fact, if she really thought about it, she didn’t actually mind Wotsits, just preferred Monster Munch. Pickled onion flavour was her favourite.
She pulled open the packet and dipped into it. Placed a puffed maize snack into her mouth and slowly chewed.
Actually, cheesy Wotsits were absolutely fantastic.
She quickly ate the entire pack, going to the extent of dampening a fingertip and pushing it into the corners of the bag to mop up the last crumbs. When she sat down, it escaped her why she ever disliked the cheesy puffs. She could quite happily eat another ten packets.
Outside her prison the rain was subsiding.
The drumming on the roof didn’t sound half as loud, and now and then there was even the complete cessation of noise as wind pushed the lighter rain aside. Bethany looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark a long time ago, yet she still couldn’t define anything specific about the ceiling overhead. Like the rest of the dungeon, she’d assumed that it would be stone, but judging by the sound from above, she was actually in a building with a corrugated tin roof.
She was young, but she was neither daft nor a crazy person. She had enough sense to understand that this wasn’t really an ogre’s tower, but something more mundane. She was in some sort of outbuilding or farm shed. Many of the farms and houses on Conn were stone built with tin or slate roofs, so this gave her no idea of where she could be. Still, where there were farm buildings, you usually found people.
“Hello?”
She spoke out loud without conscious thought. But now that she’d done so, it wasn’t such a bad idea that she wouldn’t try again.
“Hello? Is there anybody there?”
There was no answer.
Not surprisingly. Who on earth would be out in that rain? She’d just have to shout louder.
“Hello…can anybody hear me?”
I hear you, Bethany.
Beth jerked in a mix of fear and wonder.
Where had the voice come from? Here in the room? No. Couldn’t be. There was no one else in the room with her. Outside then? Had to be. Maybe a farmer was out in the terrible weather, after all.
“Who’s there?”
Don’t be afraid, little one. I’m going to find you.
“Who are you?”
I’m a friend. Don’t be frightened, okay?
“Okay. But I don’t understand…” Bethany put a hand to her head. “How can you talk inside my brain? Are you an angel?”
No, I’m not an angel.
“Are you an extra-terrestrial, then? Jimmy said that E.T’s can talk in peoples’ minds.”
I’m not an alien, Bethany, so you’ve got nothing to be scared of.
“I’m not scared of aliens.” Bethany turned full circle unable to comprehend what was happening to her. How could she hear a voice in her head? She didn’t think she was a crazy person, and only crazy people heard voices in their heads. Crazy people and saints. One thing she did understand was that she couldn’t be a saint. She wasn’t religious enough. Not like her Ma. Did she have to be religious to be a saint, though? Was Joan of Arc religious, or did she just become religious when God spoke to her? “Are you God?”
I’m not God. I’m not Jesus. I’m just a man.
“Men can’t talk in other people’s heads. Unless they’re wizards or sorcerers or something.”
Trust me; I’m just a normal man.
“Are you sure? What if you are the Skeklar and you’re using trow magic on me? Are you trying to trick me?”
If I were trying to trick you, wouldn’t I have lied to you? Wouldn’t I have told you that I was an angel or God or even an extra-terrestrial? Would I have told you I was only an ordinary man?
“I…I don’t know.” Bethany worried at the inside of her lips. “Maybe the trick is that you are saying you’re just a man when really you are one of those other things.”
Please, Bethany. You’re starting to frighten yourself.
“I’m not frightened. I’m not scared of you.” Her raised voice told more than the lie. “So you can just go away and leave me alone. Get out of my head. I know you are lying.”
Please, Bethany. Just calm down…Oh, shit, Broom, I’ve messed up. I’ve frightened the wits out the poor little soul.
FORTY
Janet
Why are men always so complicated?
Okay, maybe not all men. Perhaps it was only the ones that came into her circle. But, things never seemed without complication when it came to Janet’s personal life.
Take her husband for instance.
No doubt about it, Jonathon Connery was a handsome man. He was intelligent and witty. Tall and strong. He was well spoken and popular. He had enjoyed a varied and exciting life, first as a commissioned officer in the army, a Sandhurst-trained officer no less, then as a successful businessman. He had money. He owned a beautiful home. He had a wife that loved him. But Jonathon was not content.
For a long time Janet blamed herself for their inability to conceive the child she believed would finally make Jonathon happy. After all, her perfect man could not possibly be at fault, could he? Tests finally showed that the fault - if that could ever be the correct term for infertility - lay with her husband. He would neither accept the truth nor give up on his attempts at proving the science wrong. Love making; now, there was a term that could not be associated to what Jonathon’s brutal attempts at proving his virility turned into. When his forced passion failed to produce a child, that was when he turned to the other women.
Janet could deny her husband’s extra-marital affairs, but not when it came to ac
tually catching him at it in their bed. The truth hurts, but not as much as when denial catches up and smacks you with the weight of a runaway freightliner. She had given him her best shot, both with their marriage and with the right hook that had ended it.
From Jonathon Janet had moved to abstinence, and she’d been happy in the lie, playing the part of the newly liberated woman. But, like many, she was in denial yet, and that was why she’d sought solace in the brief flirting she’d enjoyed with Pete Johnston. Then the complication factor had jumped in with both big feet. Pete preferred Toni McNabb. Janet was left high and dry and Pete and Toni were history.
Now, here she was with the biggest complication of all.
Carter Bailey.
She barely knew him. For heaven’s sake! They’d met only yesterday, so why was he in her mind at every conceivable opportunity? Why did she feel as though she’d known him for an eternity? How was it that she felt so attached?
Like her he was damaged goods. She’d known that the first instant that she saw him on the ferry. In him she instantly recognised a vulnerability that appealed to her in a way in which she could neither understand nor put words to. It was as though she had recognised in him something for which she’d been searching for all her life. What that something could be went beyond her ability to comprehend, but when she’d sat next to him on the ferry it was as if she was drawn to him like a lodestone to the magnetic north. They were a single entity, a symbiosis awaiting connection; soul mates…every metaphor that could be culled from a badly written romance novel.
Is this love?
She thought she loved Jonathon.
But what she’d felt for her estranged husband was nothing like the buzz of enticement, the lightness in her mind, the trembling in her tummy she felt when sharing even the tiniest of glances with Carter. And, Jesus! That kiss. For all it was barely a step above chaste, she truly believed that she would burst like a popping soap bubble when his lips had caressed hers.