Kathy took another sip of the tea and looked away from the laptop for a few moments, absorbing a burst of reality before checking her emails. She had no great expectation, it was simply habit, and she was greeted by the familiar list: one stranger who addressed her as ‘My dearest friend’ and went on to explain the terrible events that had befallen her, which would only be resolved if Kathy supplied her with her bank details immediately; a few emails from companies who seemed to think that penis enlargement was something a woman in her early thirties would find essential, and newsletters from sites that she had joined when she first started using the Internet, when she still considered a regular update to be a good thing. And then there was a familiar email address: [email protected]. She clicked the envelope icon and couldn’t wait to see what Brady had to say after her bombshell the day before.
Hey Kath,
Sorry about yesterday. You just wouldn’t believe the shit we’re facing here. I wish I could tell you about it, but you know the drill. Anyway, it means that I just haven’t got the time to talk you through what’s going on with Suri at the moment. She’s really been through it over the last few weeks, so her family are happy for her to get away and spend some time in England. I won’t tell you too much about her because I don’t want to spoil the surprise. LOL.
She’s travelling under the name Jenny Grace so put that on a board so she can find you. The money’s all taken care of so all you need to do is put a roof over her head. I’m so excited about his, Kath. She’s exactly what we’ve been looking for. Just imagine if she can get rid of all the sick fucks on your list. It’s going to be unreal. Anyway, I’ve attached her flight details. Don’t forget to delete this email. I can’t imagine that the British Army would see this as a great use of their resources.
Hugs and slaps
Brady
P.S. I’m on leave in just over a week. I know it’s been ages and I can’t wait to see you and hear all about how it’s going with Suri.
“Suri.” Kathy let the name roll around inside her mouth. “Suri.” It was a pretty name, far prettier than any English name she could think of, but she was struggling to raise excitement about the imminent arrival so she put it to the back of her mind for a few minutes and switched back to Google. A strange thought had occurred to her while she was reading Brady’s email and she wanted to see if it was a possibility. How to block a psychic, she wrote. This was something that she had never encountered before, but the skull daisy had appeared in her mind like a heavy curtain falling down upon the truth. Was it possible that there was a way of intentionally blocking psychics? The idea seemed ludicrous, relying as it would in this instance on someone actually knowing that a psychic would be trying to solve the case. How would someone know that, let alone have the skill to block her? And Michael Spooner clearly wasn’t psychic. She would have known. Whatever was going on was coming from outside of him. Or perhaps she was finally losing it, her skills turning on her to exclude her from the money shot, determined to leave her frustrated and ignorant.
After exactly 0.39 seconds, Kathy was faced with 2,470,000 results, of which maybe five would be relevant before the keywords were split and she came upon pages like ‘The building blocks of a mystical society by Sally the Psychic’ and ‘Chopping blocks for sale’ (the psychic part no longer featuring at all).
The opening suggestions were forums on the subject. Can psychics read your mind without permission? Kathy wasn’t sure if this was absolutely relevant to her research but read on anyway and wasn’t terrible surprised by the results. Yes, psychics can read your mind without being invited, as Kathy knew herself even though she couldn’t read everyone’s minds. Psychics have open receptors and receive information whether they want to or not.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Kathy sighed.
Psychics must learn not to connect people with their dead relatives if they were abusive in life. This was moving away from the point and then the article returned to the original question. Protect yourself from psychic intervention by instructing your spirit guides not to talk to strangers. Kathy was suddenly embarrassed to be a part of this psychic collective; this was the advice given to people who don’t want to have their thoughts read? Who in the real world has spirit guides to speak to? Kathy had never read a mind and been stopped mid-thought by an ethereal snow bear or an angelic presence telling her to get the hell out of this guy’s head. But then she had only read the minds of terrible people—the kind of people to whom spirit animals and guardian angels tended to give a wide berth. Disassociate from your feelings and concentrate on building a wall between yourself and the psychic; this was better. She already imagined that if someone knew they were being mind-read, they could alter their thoughts slightly and make them inaccessible, or fortify themselves with imagery. She felt certain that she would be able to do that, but none of this brought her any closer to the daisy skull because its presence was far stronger than a wall built to try and block a psychic and Michael Spooner wouldn’t have been capable of that anyway. It was like a malfunction in the middle of a TV show—‘Our apologies for the interruption in your viewing. We are experiencing technical difficulties and will return to your scheduled viewing as soon as possible.’ It was strong enough to mask everything going on in Michael Spooner’s head.
The next page was more interesting—Mind Defences and Mind Probes, Psychic Radar, Insanity Immunity, A Battle in the Centre of the Mind. It addressed the reader as if he or she were harboring top secret information of national importance and had to guard their brains at all opportunities from the psychics in the shadows. Reading on, it was clearly a forum for some kind of sci-fi role-play game. And then came the Psychic Block 3000, only $99 and free delivery. Kathy didn’t even click on that page. Onwards, instructions like praying, combatting depression, using a CD or tape, counting your blessing and reading a magazine seemed to feature quite heavily and inexplicably. And then Kathy happened upon a funny little website belonging to a man called Aadidev Bhat, who looked like some kind of Indian guru. From the pictures he looked at least two hundred years old, in robes, with a serene expression, peaceful stance, but with exceptionally white teeth. He immediately made Kathy feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t unusual for her to pick up vibes from photos, but her skills stretched no further than this unless she was in the same room as the man. It also wasn’t rare for her to pick up vibes about people who were seemingly good guys. The world had woken up to the idea that evil comes in all shapes and sizes and no one is untouchable anymore, so getting a bad vibe from a man who looked like the long lost brother of Ghandi didn’t faze her.
The reason that the man had featured in her search wasn’t immediately clear, so she read through a few of his pages to get a sense of who he was. He was a world-renowned healer who used unconventional means to promote health of body and mind. He was based in India and the site was written in an awkward kind of English that made the meaning difficult to grasp in places. Reading on, the reason for his inclusion in this search finally became clear: among other achievements, he was the only man on the planet who could not only block psychics from reading his mind, but also stop them from accessing traces of him in the memories of others.
“Hmmm,” Kathy said slowly and let her eyes drift away from the laptop again. She had no idea if this was relevant, but it was food for thought. Was there really a way of blocking psychics remotely? It seemed a preposterous claim, but her mind filled with the picture of the daisy skull again, for which she had absolutely no explanation. She shifted the laptop onto the sofa beside her, dragged her body off the chair, which seemed to have aged after sitting on the soft sofa for the last half an hour, and grabbed her pad and pen. She jotted down the web address and then looked around at the walls of the living room, wondering where to pin it. It didn’t particularly relate to anything currently pinned to the wall, so she gave it a space all of its own.
Then, as if her mind were working independently, she pulled her list out of her bag and began to flick through it.
As happy as she had been to get it back, she hadn’t been able to face it immediately, but now she couldn’t believe she had waited so long. It was a simple manila file, which was now dog-eared and bursting at the seams with perversion, so much so that its flimsy pages were now held in place with a thick elastic band. Clearly she didn’t anticipate collecting quite as much information or she would have started with a stronger, bigger file, but either she didn’t think she would spend so long at the task or she underestimated just how many paedophiles she was facing. Her fingers wrestled each page and oddly shaped note or cutting until she reached ‘S’ and was curious to see what, if anything, she had on Spooner. What she found were her initial notes and a photo of the man in his living room, which had been taken through the window. Kathy remembered taking it now. He was a shifty man, suspicious, and she had trouble following him after she had smelt him, so she pursued at a distance and then snapped him through his living room window. His address was listed along with the words Mostly porn, which just goes to show that there was no way of knowing the true potential of these monsters. She had deemed him to be no great threat and now he had taken a little boy’s life. Kathy realised that her fists were clenched as she wondered just how it would all end. How could this evil ever be destroyed or was it just like the weeds—you chop down one and think that you’re getting it under control and another grows in its place?
And then there was Suri. Kathy had only considered her visit in terms of the inconvenience it would cause her thus far—having a stranger in the house. But what if Brady was right? What if Suri was the answer to her prayers? What if she could use her power to wipe out the scourge of evil, not only in the Midlands but all over the world? Could they really get away with it? Could it really be done? She looked down at her watch. With only hours before she had to collect Suri from the airport, she wouldn’t have to wait long for answers.
Chapter 11
As Kathy wrote the name on the card, the reverse of a cornflake box, Jenny Grace, her mind filled with stories: colours to fill in the vague outline that she had about her visitor. She knew that Suri was from Malaysia, or Indonesia, or somewhere around there, and she knew that she had had a difficult time, which could mean anything: she had had issues at work? She had family or housing issues? No, these felt too commonplace for a woman who was travelling the length of the world under a false name. Was she a wanted criminal? Was she in danger from terror groups stalking that region of the world (Kathy suddenly wished that she paid more attention to world affairs)? Had she started killing Asian paedophiles with her mind and now had to get out of the country? Was she stable? Would she fit neatly into the work ahead or would she take some time to adjust to it? Did she even speak English? This one was a real concern. Google was a good friend to Kathy, but she didn’t even know in which language to search for basic phrases. Would the two of them get on? This was less important. It was all about the work as far as Kathy was concerned. All they had to do was coexist; she had enough friends already.
The cornflake card was now on the car seat beside her and Kathy was well on her way to the airport. For the moment, the constant rambling in her mind was being silenced by the Corrs album playing in the vintage tape player. It sounded ropey even to her biased ears, but it was an album that had accompanied her though life and she could forgive the fact that it was now on its last legs. ‘Only When I Sleep’ belted out of the speakers and Kathy wished that she could sing; she always felt that life would be different if she could sing, as if singing powerful ballads like this was a cleansing and refreshing experience that left the singer renewed in some way. Her voice was so bad that she didn’t even sing when she was alone, but she could feel the emotion saturating every word and it was soothing the nerves that were now creeping in. Even her mum had told her that she should invest in a car CD player or even something to play an MP3 on, but she was quite happy with the tape. After it had played on repeat more times than Kathy could count, the airport crept onto the horizon and Kathy crawled along with the traffic into the darkened car parking area; she hated places like this and trying to find a space and back into it successfully, but she had too much on her mind to pay it much attention today and slid the car in far easier than she had expected. Before she got out of the car, she took a look at herself in the mirror to see if she was presentable, knowing that it was a bit late to do anything about it if she wasn’t. However, with half of her face caved in from her ‘accident,’ whether or not she had a few hairs out of place seemed irrelevant. Her only real concern was arriving at the terminal late, so she grabbed her bag, threw the sign under her arm and made her way, skipping through the corridors and walkways that led into the main airport.
The airport was alive with bodies rushing in all directions, the stress of people, like Kathy, fearing a missed plane, the dull hum of goodbye and the joyously erupting hellos; a gauntlet of wheelie bags and trollies, imposing advertising boards and cafes, endless signs to direct the human traffic; chaos on the ground, a spacious vacuum above with room enough to land the planes indoors. Kathy was usually far more excited at airports, knowing that there was somewhere hot fixed to the end of the journey, but despite her lack of excitement, her natural inclination toward punctuality kept her feet moving. And then she was there, waiting with a small handful of others of all shapes and sizes, some with boards—mostly men of a taxi-like persuasion—most with expectant faces. Kathy let the sign hang at her side and watched the walkway intensely as if she might blink and miss the surge of arriving passengers as if the walkway itself might collapse in on itself before transforming into a corridor-shaped robot and trampling them all to death. And then a smiling woman appeared in her immaculately pressed skirt, blouse, waistcoat, and scarf, with a tiny corner hat pinned precisely to the front of her meticulously-styled blonde hair. She was instantly likable, despite her appearance, in a way that only air hostesses managed to achieve. The passengers obviously appreciated the personality of this woman and the contribution she had made to their journey, as they filed past her and all either nodded and bowed their appreciation or shook her hand with zeal.
With the plane emptying, Kathy held the cornflake card in front of her and scanned the face of each female passenger, determining which would be her mystery Suri. She was still examining every tired eyes and weary smile emerging from the passageway when she heard a tiny voice by her side.
“Mrs. Smith?” it said quietly.
Kathy was tempted to ignore it and continue the search for her new sister in arms against evil, but she had to respond to her name.
“Yes, can I…?” What she saw when she turned around shocked the words from her.
“I am Jenny Grace,” the voice said, and Kathy took in the full sight of what could only be described as a little girl. She was a full foot or more smaller than Kathy and had the most petite features that Kathy had ever seen, like a porcelain doll with lightly darkened skin and hair so black that it almost shone blue in the light. She was clearly exhausted from her journey, but she gave Kathy the widest, beaming smile that anyone had ever given her. In fact Kathy couldn’t remember another single person in her life being as happy to see her as this young girl. A young girl though! A child! Suddenly the ‘LOL’ in Brady’s email made sense. Kathy pictured her on the other side of the world in this moment, killing herself laughing at the idea of her best friend coming face to face with this minor export.
“Suri?” Kathy whispered, double checking.
“Yes, it is me, Grace, and it is so good to see you, Auntie,” Suri said in a broken English that made up with joy for anything it lacked in accuracy and hugged Kathy around the middle in the way that she had probably been briefed to do when she left home.
Kathy was so surprised that her body froze and it would look to anyone who cared to observe them as if Suri were hugging a complete stranger or that her cuddles had turned the woman to stone. Then Kathy relaxed into it a little and patted the young girl’s back before breaking suddenly and holding her at arm’s lengt
h.
“Your face, Mrs Smith,” Suri said, reaching out to touch the bruises and Kathy moved her head away from her touch.
“It’s nothing really. Shall we go?” she asked and Suri nodded excitedly. Kathy got the feeling that there was nothing she could say or do that would dampen this young girl’s spirits.
As Suri dragged her single wheelie suitcase in the direction of the car, her head darted around in all directions, taking in the colour and atmosphere of this new country and its inhabitants. She looked far from out of place in her skinny jeans and T-shirt, but there was a wonder in her eyes that gave her away, as if she had just woken up and was seeing life for the first time. Kathy saw none of this, a few paces ahead of the young girl. She was hunting through her bag for the parking voucher so she could find the car, and devising an email in her head responding to Brady’s ‘LOL.’ She would have to edit out the swear words and insults before she sat down at the laptop to send it, but the essence would remain. What the hell am I supposed to do with a child?!
“Mrs. Smith,” Suri eventually called when the gap between them was becoming worryingly wide and she feared being left behind. “Please wait, Mrs. Smith.”
Kathy turned back to the young girl skipping behind her, the case now looking awkward as she tried to catch up, and slowed down a little, still searching in her bag for the elusive ticket. When she found it, she turned her attention to the signs to find the corresponding car park. She had paid little attention to where she left the car on the way in. Now she was racing off again, and Suri was trailing behind but the enigmatic smile still remained as she shifted gear to keep up.
Approaching Zero Page 9