The Sister

by China, Max

  "That's good, but don't ever play with me again, sometimes I get carried away and …" he said darkly. "Now that we're clear, off you go!"

  As they left, the tallest boy turned and said, "How did you do that?" There was a hint of admiration in his voice. "I mean what was that thing you just did, with the legs?"

  For a moment, it looked as if Kirk wouldn't reply, but when he did, he said only four words. "Combat training, Korean style."

  Chapter 129

  Miller often wondered what Kirk might be up to now. He hadn't seen him since the early hours of 25th April 1980, when he was nineteen years old. The exact date stuck in his mind because Kirk changed the course of his life that day . . . The brainwashing, the Korean War, something he told him to do. Look it up.

  After wondering so many times what had happened to him, he decided to track him down, finally finding him in a nursing home for the elderly. Miller became a regular visitor, and Kirk was always pleased to see him, keen to catch up on the life of his former pupil.

  The last time they'd met, Kirk held onto his hand a long time as they shook. The staff had him propped up in bed, his face hollow and gaunt with pain; the steeliness had left his eyes, but the chipped tooth grin was the same.

  "Did you live up to your name, Miller?"

  The question baffled him, but he kept his confusion to himself. "I think so, sir."

  Kirk relaxed into his pillow. "Good . . . I'm glad. You haven't found yourself a woman though have you . . . you've been avoiding the question ever since you've been coming to see me. You haven't, have you?"

  Kirk's grip increased perceptibly, the cool and papery texture of his skin more apparent as he did so.

  Miller shook his head. "No."

  "Don't end up like me son . . . alone in bed, waiting for the night to come." His voice was dry. He licked his lips.

  Miller handed him a thin plastic cup of water.

  Fixing Miller with his gaze as he sipped, Kirk wiped the wetness from his upper lip. "There's nothing wrong with you, boy, just moving in the wrong direction, running away when you should be chasing . . . get yourself a younger woman," A light shone in his eyes. "I had one once, a French mistress at the school, she was younger than me. She'd have looked after me when I got old," he sighed, "Didn't work out though . . ."

  "Why not? What prevented you?"

  His eyes dimmed. "It's a long story and one you wouldn't understand or care for much. Just suffice to say, it was the nights," he drew a short breath. "I used to disappear in the night, back into the hell I'd escaped from. It scared her. Don't you let your hell hold you back from your destiny." His eyes, storm no longer on their horizons, were calm and grey. They locked onto Miller's. "You . . . you get chasing. Do you understand what I'm saying to you, boy?"

  He nodded.

  "That's the spirit," he said, finally relinquishing his grip on Miller's hand.

  "Good night, sir."

  "Get chasing, boy," he said, grimacing, almost folding with pain.

  Night came. Kirk was in Korea again. Once more at the fork in the road he'd come to know so well, and this time instead of turning right, he turned left, running more or less in the direction of the river. His decision to go south, he remembered well. It was the road less travelled by, but now of course, the other direction had become the one less travelled by. Still heading generally south, he kept above the line of the road higher in the hills, where the tree line more or less remained intact. He hadn't seen anything other than sporadic Chinese activity for half a day; he decided to make his way down. He reached a village, a single street of roughly thatched single storey stone dwellings. It looked deserted, apart from a few chickens scratching in the dirt and a mangy dog that looked suspiciously at him, emitting a low growl. Desperate for food, he couldn't chance walking down the main road; instead, he skirted round the back. Turning a corner, he stopped and peered down the flank of a storage building. Kirk had yet to see or hear anyone else. He poked his head round the gap between two buildings. It was clear. He moved rapidly. He kept low, aware he was exposed. Somebody stepped out quite suddenly in front of him. A soldier appeared, and he looked as startled as Kirk, but he seemed friendly, all grinning teeth and a wide flat face.

  Kirk grinned back at him.

  Still grinning, the soldier swung his rifle up and shot him in the chest.

  He fell, clutching at the wound, looking at the heart blood on his hands in disbelief . . . unbelievable pain seared into his chest and right through him, the sky above bluer than he'd ever known. For some crazy reason, a line from his favourite Robert Frost poem entered his head and at last, he knew . . .

  So that's what would have happened if I'd chosen the other way . . .

  Miller returned the following morning having woken with a start in the middle of the night. In the brightness of his room, he thought he'd seen Kirk. Tall and proud, he looked younger than he ever recalled seeing him. He was dressed in a soldier's uniform. He grinned at Miller . . . and then faded away. Miller lay in bed unable to sleep for a long time after.

  He reported as usual to the office. The matron sat him down; he knew something had happened to Kirk before she told him. Her mouth was moving in slow motion it seemed, her tongue and her teeth working behind her lips enunciating her vowels, he stared right through her transfixed.

  "Are you all right, Mr Miller?"

  "Huh? Oh, I'm sorry . . . I."

  "You didn't hear a word I said, did you?"

  "Sorry, but yes I did hear you. I do that sometimes, just drift, but I did hear . . . Please carry on."

  "The doctor thinks his heart gave out. He was asleep . . . he wouldn't have felt a thing."

  Miller wished he'd got to know Kirk better. Why is it we always think like this when it's too late?

  The matron spoke again, "I think he knew he didn't have long. Last night he handed me this and asked me make sure you got it when you came by." She held a hardcover book in her hand; she stood, leaned over the desk and passed it to him.

  He took it in his hand, surprised at the lightness of it. The dust jacket was missing, but inscribed into the faded blue cover in pale gold leaf, the title and the author's name read:

  Mountain Interval.

  Robert Frost.

  Chapter 130

  He'd made his mind up to talk to Carla about the sequence of events that led him to Scotland.

  "Daydreaming again were we?" Carla was dressed in a black leather bomber jacket with a synthetic black fur collar that matched her hair in its colour and spikiness perfectly. She looked taller than she had on the train. He stood, and pulled out a chair for her.

  She declined his offer to take her jacket. "It's so cold in here!"

  "Are you sure you're a reporter?" The Northern Light's beer he'd consumed too quickly loosened his tongue and lit his eyes with mischief.

  A vague smile widened her mouth, the white tips of her even teeth exposed behind lush red cherry lips. "Why do you ask that?"

  "You could be a fashion model . . ."

  She pursed her lips coyly; the lipstick accentuated the fullness of her lips.

  He found himself staring at her.

  A waiter appeared, and they ordered food and drinks. The meal passed with the sort of conversation that fitted easily in between mouthfuls. The Dutch courage from the beer had dissipated. If you tell her, will she think you're a nut?

  Carla's nose for a story told her Miller wanted to tell her something. Over-riding her natural impatience, she waited. He'll open up soon.

  The staff had cleared the table of everything, but the coffee they were drinking. They were the last people in there.

  "I'm curious, Miller, why the change of mind? I mean . . . I don't usually drop hints to get a guy to take me out, and this is going to sound terribly conceited, but I'm not short on offers."

  Miller looked around at the empty tables and chairs. At last, they could speak without fear of anyone overhearing. "You only live once that I know of . . . I've been going throug
h some changes. I don't know what they're all about, or what they might mean, or even if they are all part of the same thing, but if there's just this one shot at things . . . I mean, if I can't change it, then at least I want to understand it . . ." he became flustered. "Can I start at the beginning? I'll try not to bore you."

  "The people that bore me," she reassured him, "are the ones that presume to think they're interesting. To them, it's unthinkable they might be boring. You don't bore me at all, far from it," she said. Lifting a handbag onto her lap and fidgeting around inside it, she pulled out a compact mirror and checked both sides of her face before putting it back in the bag. Leaning forwards, her elbows on the table, she supported her chin on her hands and said, "Go for it."

  He grimaced and scratched the back of his neck, unsure exactly where the beginning was and then inhaled deeply. "This isn't going to be easy." He exhaled a short puff of air and then began. "When I was a kid, I was involved in an incident where three of my friends died."

  "That's awful, what happened . . . How old were you?"

  "I was fifteen. We were on a field trip with the school . . ."

  He'd reached the point where the boys had drowned, and he realised that he'd tightly twisted the corner of his napkin and wrung it between his hands; he let it go, laying it on the table. Slowly, it unravelled itself.

  He stalled and shook his head. "I don't know if I can just stop there, without telling you about Dr. Ryan . . ."

  "So tell me about Dr. Ryan!"

  He looked at his watch. "I'm going to have to leave it there; I have to be up early."

  Carla put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it as she passed him to visit the cloakroom. He called for the bill, and while he waited alone, his thoughts turned to Ryan. In the dim corner of the deserted room, the light from outside threw horizontal bars of light across the table top nearest and up the wall. In the shadows, he imagined Ryan sitting there, one eye narrowed and focused on him.

  That book I never wrote, Miller. I never told you this. I had a great interest in the paranormal from an early age; meeting her only fuelled it further. One element that interested me particularly - because it was recurrent - was the part water played in sightings and hauntings. So much testimony down through the years, not provable of course, but to me it made sense. If ghosts, spirits and apparitions are residual traces of energy, fired by a tragic, or traumatic event - recorded somehow in the fabric of buildings or rocks or places - and if that energy is electrical in some way . . . I mean, we know that people can generate static electricity. We can measure its fields and detect changes in it with polygraphs, EEG and so on. We know people on rare occasions can generate enough power to spontaneously combust, although we don't know how. Water is a conductor of electricity. Could it be then that it aids the playback of whatever impulses have been recorded during extreme circumstances such as suicides or murders? I think so, and I think it goes a long way to explain why you see your apparitions most clearly in the rain. And here's another fascinating thought for you that I seem to have overlooked until now. Your friends perished on 15th July, St Swithun's day.

  Miller shrugged at the shadowy corner. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

  It marks the anniversary of the mine disaster that took place nearby in 1857. It rained so hard it flooded the workings, killing dozens of people. Your friends drowned on St Swithun's day.

  "You've lost me, what's the significance?"

  Local superstition has had it for years that, on that day, the ghosts from the mine return to walk among the living . . . Belief is a powerful thing, Miller. If you believe in something strongly enough, anything is possible . . .

  "Ryan, that's just fairy tale stuff."

  Is it? Consider the Tibetans - they've mastered a technique based entirely on the belief that they can create a thought creature. A Tulpa they call it. Other people can see these things, as well. There was a documented case, where an English woman was able to create one following the prescribed methods, but she lacked the inner spirituality to control it, she had to get help to get rid of it. Do you believe in ghosts Miller?

  He laughed, "It's a bit late for me to be in denial!"

  "Who were you talking to?" Carla cast her eyes about the room.

  "Was I talking?" Miller drew his hand across his face and said, "Phew! Thank heavens I only had one of those beers. I've got to go."

  Chapter 131

  Outside Miller checked his watch. "I'll walk you to your hotel. You're only five minutes from mine. I haven't stopped talking about myself all evening. We really should have talked more about you, Carla."

  "Don't worry about it," she smiled. "I want to hear more about you."

  "I don't think we have time…"

  "Come on, at least until we get to my hotel."

  "It was July 15th, a Tuesday…" A voice rose within him, circumventing all barriers to it, catching him unawares. His story, rarely told, tripped off his tongue. What are you doing, Bruce? I'm never drinking Northern Lights again!

  The recollections were vivid; he brought them to life for her. "The tragedy was bad enough, but when they started pulling these old skeletons out of the water from years before…"

  As they arrived outside her hotel ten minutes later, he was still talking. "I don't know what's happening to me. It's like everything converging at once, outside my control. I can't make any real sense of it." He stared up into the yellow haze that held back the darkness around the streetlight. "It's like everything has been coming to this … whatever it is. That's why I called Doctor Ryan."

  "What did he think was happening to you?"

  "Look, I've said too much already."

  "Miller, I want to know what's happening to you."

  "Strange dreams, that's all."

  "You're not going to tell me?" She seemed disappointed.

  He took a sharp intake of breath. His lips pressed tight together.

  "Come on, Miller, answer the question."

  "It's complicated," he exhaled.

  "I don't care, tell me."

  He focused on her. "I keep having nightmares where I wake up on the point of drowning and that's not all. Lately, I've found that if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost tell what people are thinking. Not with everybody, and not all the time." He told her everything that he'd told Ryan, with the exception of the Simpson dream. "Do you think I'm going crazy?" He was staring at her the way he did on the train - not seeing her - but seeing through her. His eyes came back into focus. He looked exhausted.

  She'd been tempted to interrupt him, but she held off, not wanting to stifle the words flowing out of him. It had been like watching a self-imposed exorcism. "Holy shit . . ." She pursed her lips and whistled low.

  Miller trembled.

  Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to hold him.

  They'd been outside her hotel for a quarter of an hour; she shivered in the dropping temperature. "Are you going to come in?" she said, and reaching for his hand pulled him up the steps.

  "Carla, listen. I have an appointment tomorrow with someone who apparently holds the key to my destiny and it's so late." He left her by the entrance doors. He was ten feet away before she even thought of protesting.

  He blew her a kiss. "There's nothing I want more than to come in with you, but it's going to have to wait, at least until I get back."

  She called out after him, "I won't be here when you get back!"

  Carla slipped into her room and dropped her handbag onto the seat of the armchair. Removing her shoes and jacket, she then wriggled out of her jeans. Semi-naked, she admired herself in the mirror, and then leaned down into her bag to pull out her voice recorder. It was no bigger than a pack of ten cigarettes. She pushed the rewind button, held it close to her ear and clicked play.

  When she decided to pass the time of day with Miller on the train, she'd not expected to find a potential story in him. As the journey and the conversation progressed, she discovered there were at least two, and as she reflecte
d on the content of the tape, she realised Miller himself was a story. His reticence annoyed her; she was going to have to get closer. She hadn't had a challenge in a long time, but first she had to get to grips with the Vigilante case.

  Putting the recorder down, she picked up her phone, selected a name from the menu and pressed the connect button. She knew it was late, but Michael Brady never slept before one o'clock in the morning.

  "Hello, Michael, it's Carla."

  "Carla? Oh, Carla Blue! It's been such a long time… Is it really you?"

  "Yes, it's really me." Carla Blue . . . When the tape turned up at The News of The World, he'd been an officer in the Met and had heard through the grapevine that she'd watched it. He called her at work to talk about it. Afterwards, they had a brief fling. It didn't last . . . he outlived his usefulness, but she remained on good terms with him. She never fell out with people like him. In her job, you never knew when you might need them again.

  "You still there?"

  "Yes, I am. I was just thinking, when are you lot ever going to let me live that down?"

  He chuckled down the other end of the line, "Well, how are you?"

  "I'm very well and you?" She didn't allow him to answer, getting straight to the point. "Michael, I'm putting a piece together on the Vigilante murders and I'm struggling to get information. Is that something you can help with?" She held her breath.

  "Oh, Carla, you're putting me on the spot here."

  "Michael, I'm sorry, but I don't have anyone else I can ask. If you help me, I'll owe you one." she lowered her voice suggestively.

  "Look, Carla, they're keeping this one under wraps from the press, if anything gets out . . . it could get sticky."