by Jon Jacks
Ironic, isn’t it? That she can’t see the obvious.
She doesn’t stop.
She turns to Pat.
‘And you Pat; you hang around with Sammy, yet you can’t stand the way she has to have every boy, even the ones she’s going to cast aside later. Even the boys she knows you fancy. Especially the boys you fancy!’
Oh dear dear dear.
I told you it wasn’t the best way, didn’t I?
Luckily for Liz, May’s noticed that her revelations aren’t going down at all well.
The clenched fists are a bit of a clue. The bared teeth another.
Poor, sweet little Liz is twitching with anxiety that her secret is about to come out.
But she’s been saved.
Well, saved from May’s revelations, anyway.
See, she’s in love with Sammy.
Thing is, she needn’t be nervous.
Because Sammy finds her attractive too,
A pity, really, that May didn’t spill those secrets, eh?
As it is, though, she’s surrounded by fear-filled eyes.
By angry faces.
‘Liar!’ Sammy storms.
‘Liar liar liar!’ Pat spits, right in May’s face.
‘Just who the hell does she think she is?’
Sammy gives May a sharp, painful kick on the shin.
‘She can’t see the future!’ Pat sneers.
They stride away, laughing.
‘She’s just been fooling us all along that’s she’s got these special powers!’ one of them giggles.
Yeah, May’s just been made to look a fool.
There’s a tarot card for that; The Fool.
But, unlike May, the fool on the card isn’t hobbling around with an agonisingly swollen shin.
*
Chapter 18
By the time she’s home, May has managed to hide her painful hobbling enough to slip past her mum and dad without them showing any concern.
‘Yeah, okay mum; I’ll be down for tea. Half-an-hour, right?’
That’s half-an-hour in which she can sit at her table once more and deal out her cards.
Before she starts, she notices a loose thread in the light cloth she always spreads out across the table.
She picks at it, hoping to pull it clear. But it’s a longer thread than she thought; as she pulls at it, it lifts up and begins to untangle all the other threads running across it, threatening to loosen everything.
She stops, pats it down, realising she’s going to have to live with that loose thread after all if she wants to retain her work cloth.
She picks out a card from the pack.
It’s Pat this time; Page of Pentacles.
She’s hoping the cards will come out differently this time.
Hoping her warning has been enough to change the future.
To save someone at least.
Even as she’s dealing them out, he’s there again; Ben.
Loping through the bushes.
Glancing about him; making sure no one can see him.
Heading up that hill.
The gun fires. A number of times.
Pat’s body lies sprawled across the school entrance.
There are other bodies too.
Scattered across the school yard.
Ben’s there, on the hill.
He must have spun the gun around in his hands, placing the muzzle tight against his chest.
The gun goes off a final time.
And another body lies sprawled across the ground.
*
Chapter 19
Hey, wait a minute, you’re thinking.
How come she can see all this detail? They’re just cards after all.
But I told you, didn’t I?
In May’s mind, the cards come to life.
I should know how she does it, but I don’t.
But May doesn’t know how she does it either, does she?
That’s what she’s been trying to figure out, remember?
But isn’t she just amazing?
I mean, do you know anybody else who can read the cards lik–
Oh oh.
It’s happening again.
The violent kicking.
The ‘nodding off’.
*
Now this really is odd.
See, although May suffers these attacks, I’ve never known one so quickly follow another.
There’s usually at least a month between each attack.
It’s the pressure she’s under, obviously.
She’s trying to save lives.
And no one’s listening to her.
No wonder she’s having another attack.
And yeah, I reckon attack is the right word.
Laid out on the floor, she’s convulsing violently.
Tonight, she’s lucky.
If she falls awkwardly, she can end up banging her head time and time against the wall or a piece of furniture.
Her mum and dad would be sure to hear if May hadn’t deliberately put her music up nice and loud to drown out the noise of her convulsions.
Yeah, see, although she won’t admit it to herself, May does know something’s not quite right.
Knows she’s not just ‘nodding off’ for a while.
Knows she’s suffering something unusual.
She just doesn’t know what it is that’s happening to her.
I mean, as I pointed out, she can’t read her own cards.
But more than that, it’s not like there’s a card in there called The Epileptic.
It’s not like there’s a rune that flags it up either, is there?
Or a line on your palm. (Not that May has any lines, of course.)
Then again, all that’s not quite true.
See, you could say that the whole point of all this here prophesying paraphernalia is to recognise an epileptic.
No?
You don’t believe me?
Hey, that’s understandable.
But, see, the chances are pretty high that it’s an epileptic who’ll be able to get the most information out of all that fortune-telling equipment.
Go back a few hundred years, or better still a few thousand, and you’ll find that epileptics were regarded as natural seers.
Their seizures weren’t seen as something to be feared or ridiculed, but something to be celebrated.
Their seizures were a brief moment, it was believed, when they were in contact with other worlds. Other dimensions.
Those crazy ancients, huh?
Only…only…only…well, whaddya know; the latest scientific thought doesn’t seem to think it’s such a crazy belief after all.
Their seizures are a brief moment, it’s now believed, when they’re in contact with their subconscious mind.
A linking of the conscious mind with all the knowledge we have stored away and otherwise hidden in our subconscious.
‘I…I’ve got it!’
Oh, she’s coming round.
Coming round quite quickly too.
She’s nowhere near as dazed and lost as she normally is.
She’s excited.
She’s reaching for her notepad and pen on her bedside table.
She’s urgently scribbling down notes.
Setting it all out while she can still remember whatever it is she’s figured out.
She’s had another inspiration.
A good one too this time.
She’s worked out what connects all her fortune-telling paraphernalia.
Worked out what they all have in common.
People.
It’s not the cards, the runes, the hexagrams that May’s reading; it’s the people.
May is reading people.
*
Chapter 20
It’s not so surprising really, is it?
That May’s reading people?
She doesn’t need the cards. Or the runes, the hexagrams.
She could see the future perfectly well without them.
See, it’s like the way a card’s meaning is altered, even completely changed, by the cards surrounding it.
Like the way the cloth’s loose thread started to unravel everything around it when it was pulled.
Take away this card, replace it with another, and this card’s meaning is changed.
Take away this thread, and everything falls apart.
People are the same.
We’re defined by the people surrounding us.
Who we are. When we act. How we act.
And there are interactions between every one of us.
The connections, see?
What one person does affects the lives of all the others.
And what they do affects his or her life too.
Take away this person, and all the surrounding people are changed.
So take away ten people; and the lives of countless people begin to completely unravel.
*
May feels more anxious than ever.
She’s completely on edge.
Not herself at all.
She doesn’t know what to do.
How can she stop it?
What should she do?
She wishes she didn’t know what she knows.
Wishes that she didn’t have this talent for seeing what’s about to unfold.
What’s the point of knowing something like this if you can’t prevent it?
*
Chapter 21
I’d like to be able to say that the other kids at school sense May’s nervousness.
But they don’t have to sense it.
It’s obvious to everyone.
The way May moves.
Edgily. Falteringly. Jerkily.
Like she’s scared of everything around her.
Making her way too clumsy.
Dropping things, like she’s got no control over her fingers.
Bumping into things, like her arms are way too huge for her body.
Even her feet no longer seem to do what she wants them to do; she trips over them a number of times.
Her mind can’t handle her fears and the control of her body at the same time.
It’s too big a task.
She’s wide-eyed too.
Staring.
Staring, when she sees them, at the girls she knows are going to die.
‘Stop staring at me like that that May!’ they scream back in her face.
May doesn’t mind.
How can she be upset with them?
They’re going to be dead in just a few days’ time.
*
May’s had another idea.
One she’s had before.
Only to put it off.
And put it off.
And put it off.
Now she’s changed the idea slightly.
She’s not going to put it off any longer.
She’s going to confront Ben.
She’s going to ask him if he’s planning a high school massacre.
*
Chapter 22
‘What? May, are you crazy? Course I’m not so angry with people like Sammy that I’d kill them!’
Well, what other sort of answer was she expecting, do you think?
And she hasn’t really got around to asking the question yet.
This was the far more abstract, ‘Could you kill someone if you disliked them enough, Ben? Say, like Sammy?’
Fortunately, I can tell you the kind of answer she was expecting.
She thought he’d be honest with her.
Yeah, good luck with that one May!
I mean, remember when I was saying I wasn’t the devil?
And yeah, I had to admit, didn’t I, that the devil was bound to say that!
Otherwise, how was I ever going to pinch your soul, right?
(Notice I slipped in the I there? He he he! Just my little joke, honest!)
Thing is, May’s a bit shocked by Ben’s reply.
Especially the ‘are you crazy?’ bit.
She knows that that’s what people are whispering behind her back.
Hey, why wouldn’t she know?
There are few secrets as far as May’s concerned.
Though, of course, she hasn’t been able to figure out exactly what Ben’s hiding.
See, not everything about Ben’s appearances in the cards have been completely clear.
May’s not even sure if it’s his body she sees on top of the hill.
It’s all darkness and forbidding, clouding the scene, her judgement.
Then again, who else’s body could it be?
So May’s going to persist with this until she gets some sort of answer.
‘You’re sure you’re not planning on killin–’
As she says it, May at last realises that it’s a really really stupid thing to ask.
Anyone who’s about to cause mayhem in school with a sniper rifle is hardly going to come straight out with it, is he?
‘Damn, you got me May! What gave me away? The guy down at the gun store, he spilt the beans, yeah?’
No, what he really says is;
‘May, course I’m not planning on going on a killing spree! Just what sort of person do you think I am, huh?’
Know what?
May’s so embarrassed, she’s taken her eye off the ball.
Instead of watching out for any subtle reaction he might make when she asked the question, she’d hung her head in shame when she’d spotted the hurt in his eyes.
But there was more than hurt in those eyes.
There was a spark of recognition.
Like he knew what May was getting at.
There was something far from subtle too.
Yet May, usually so observant, so sensitive to another’s actions and emotions, missed it.
Missed it because she felt she’d hurt him.
He said ‘killing spree’.
But May had never finished her sentence, had she?
*
Chapter 23
‘How could you think that of me?’ Ben demands. ‘That I’d kill someone?’
‘It was the cards, Ben! The cards said–’
‘The cards?’ He says it with a mix of disbelief and fury. ‘You read this in your cards? That I’m some sort of crazed mass murderer?’
‘Look, Ben, I’m sorry; I had to ask, to see–’
‘Had to ask if I was some whacko who was going to go around blasting away at every kid he saw?’
‘But when I told you people were going to be killed before, you just laughed, said cool and–’
‘I wasn’t taking you seriously May! I thought it was just your overactive imagination–’
‘Overactive imagination? You didn’t believe me? You didn’t think I meant it was a prediction–’
‘Prediction? Hah! May, helping fix up dates for kids hardly makes you some sort of all wise wizard or whatever you’ve started to believe you are, does it?’
‘But I know all their secrets, all their–’
‘May, all you’re doing is picking up on certain things they’re saying, or the way they act; magicians call it cold reading, or something like that, don’t they? It’s clever, yeah, I’ll give you that – but you’re not seeing the future, May!’
‘I’m sorry Ben, sorry I asked.’
Wow, is poor old May embarrassed or what?
‘You should be May, you should be!’
Wow, is Ben angry or what?
He shakes his head in disbelief.
Then he storms off.
Poor old May; if she goes on like this, everyone’s going to end up thinking she’s totally lost it, aren’t they?
*
Now, all this puts me in one heck of a dilemma.
See, after her little chat with Ben, May’s beginning to have doubts about her abilities.
She’s wondering, like, Hey, is Ben right? Have I just been kidding myself all along that I can see the future?
> In a way, she’s hoping it’s true.
Because if she can’t see the future, then what she’s seen in the cards isn’t going to come true after all.
All those little kiddies; they’re all suddenly saved, right?
Problem is, Ben’s wrong.
And May’s right; those kids are gonna die.
Unless…unless…unless she continues to try and figure some way around it all.
And the only way she’s going to do that is if someone reassures her that’s she has got special abilities.
And now, see, the only person capable of doing that is me.
*
Chapter 24
So, where’s my dilemma, you might ask?
Can’t I just say, ‘Hi May! You’re right! Congratulations! You do have special abilities!’
Well, I’m sorry, but the state May’s in? – well, me just turning up like that, that’s definitely going to tip her over the edge!
She’s already seriously wondering if everyone’s right and she is just a little crazed.
No, no; I can’t just show up in her life without making things far worse.
I’m going to have to continue doing what I’ve been doing all along – which is sort of breaking her in gently to my presence.
Trouble is, as we’re swiftly running short of time, my breaking in gently is going to have to move into a higher gear; a sort of breaking her in pretty damned hard.
And that in itself ain’t going to do her state of mind much good, is it now?
*
Even as May lets a furious Ben stalk off, I decide it’s time I started making a few moves that will begin to grab her attention.
So, this time when I let her catch a glimpse of me out of the corner of her eye, I linger just that little bit longer than normal.
She sees me.
But only just.
I move quickly.
It’s my own special ability see?
To let May see me if I want her to.
But to vanish like a blur of mist when I don’t want her to.
Now she really does think she’s seeing the school ghost.
She shudders nervously.
Shakes her head, like she doesn’t want to admit that she’s just seen what could be a ghost.
Is she really going crazy? she wonders.
She walks off, her head down, her feet moving swiftly over the ground.
Poor poor May; I really hope it isn’t me that tips her into oblivion.
*
Chapter 25