by Nate Kenyon
Sarah trembled, clenched, as flames licked at the monitor and the smell of melting plastic filled the room. The temperature kept dropping. The room was frigid. Someone called out and the words were lost within the buzzing that rose up like the flight of a thousand bees.
“Let it go!” Jess shouted at her. “Into me! Just let it go!”
Sarah turned to look blankly at her and for a moment fear rose up and an oily sickness turned Jess’s stomach, and then the girl looked away and a cry like a splitting inside forced itself from her lips as a series of small cracks and then explosions came in quick succession from across the room.
Sarah slumped; then her body jerked once as Jess gathered the girl into her arms and felt the coiled charge jump from her hands and dissipate into the air.
“Oh, baby, sweetheart, it’s okay, it’s going to be all right…” she whispered into the girl’s muffled sobs, her body tingling, muscles suddenly weak. She stroked Sarah’s hair, smoothed the sweat from her brow, pulled the electrodes from her skin as her own tears spilled out over her cheeks. Sarah curled into her lap like a small child and rocked, shaking. Jess clutched her bony ribs, rocked her, rocked. “It’s okay now, I’m here….”
Jess heard the hiss of the fire extinguisher and from somewhere far away she watched Patrick spraying the monitor’s smoking husk with white foam. The air was thick with a choking, acrid smoke.
Only then did she glance around at the place where the explosions had come from, and saw the rows of specimen bottles shattered across the shelves, their contents lying among the dripping ruin of glass and bottle tops like dead things, evidence at the scene of a crime.
—26—
She was in the empty church, standing with her arms wrapped around herself for warmth, as the afternoon sun trickled through stained glass and painted the polished floor in reds and yellows beneath her feet. She had wrapped Sarah in a blanket and laid her down in the backseat of Charlie’s car, had smoothed the fine black hairs away from Sarah’s forehead until the girl’s breathing deepened and she slept.
Her heart broke for the girl. Who had been there to protect her, all these years? Who had been there to hold her when the darkness crept in, to explain that whatever affliction God had given her, whatever this curse was (and yes, Jess thought, it was a curse), it didn’t destroy her humanity?
Her words, whispered before she knew what she was saying: “I’m here for you, Sarah. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”
She stood now among the shattered remains of her confidence, struggling to find something whole, something she could hold on to and use. But everything needed to be rethought, reevaluated. The world was different now, not on the surface but underneath, where it really mattered. For some reason, her thoughts kept going back to Michael’s death; had she wanted it to happen? Had there been a part of her, however small, that had wanted it all to end, had she reached out at that moment and pushed him away when she should have been pulling him in close?
A voice spoke from somewhere like a chittering devil: You were happy when he died, weren’t you? Happy to have the burden relieved’!
Her helpless gaze fell on the statue of Christ, hanging cold and lifeless in the shadows of the altar. A half-remembered children’s prayer rose unbidden to her lips, a prayer for forgiveness, for absolution. For strength. What sort of God would make a world like this? she wondered. Where children were given terrible burdens to carry, left alone, abused, even killed?
Everything had happened so fast. It baffled her. When had she become so attached to this girl? Surely she felt sorry for Sarah, felt as if she should do all she could to help. But when had these feelings blossomed into real responsibility, into something even more?
A noise came from the direction of the door. Footsteps offered into silence. A moment later Patrick stepped up next to her, smelling sharply of smoke and chemicals and light sweat. “She’s still asleep. I suppose you have someplace to take her?”
“She needs to get back to the hospital before she’s missed.”
“Are you sure—”
“What else can I do? Another hour or two, they’ll arrest me for kidnapping. I can’t do anyone any good from jail.”
“You’re questioning yourself.”
“Of course I am!”
“I want you to know that everything you’re doing for that girl is honorable. You’re the only one who’s really tried to help her. You’re the only friend she has right now.” Patrick’s excitement was palpable. But he was fighting hard to hold it in, probably for her benefit. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. The movement did not seem inappropriate.
For a moment she allowed herself to lean into him and regain her balance. She looked up into his face, felt him lean in as well, his lips brush hers. Then he pulled away.
“I apologize,” he said, a look very close to shock on his face. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s all right. I—”
He was shaking his head. “No. That was crazy. I’m taking advantage of an emotional situation. It’s just that I’ve witnessed something I’ve waited my whole life to see. It’s overwhelming. I’m sorry.”
He turned and walked down the empty church aisle, pacing, a ball of nervous energy. She watched him go, not sure what to think of anything. Had she wanted that to happen? Had she been sending out some kind of signal?
“She’s at the right age,” he said finally, turning back. “Puberty often triggers psychic phenomena. We call it the poltergeist effect. But once she’s older, these phenomena may very likely grow easier to control. They may even disappear.” He studied the light and the patterns falling from stained glass. “I’m sorry for my part in this. I got carried away, I didn’t think about how it might affect her. She’s scared to death of it, I know. But you’ve got to understand what this means to me. She’s revolutionary. She’s one of a kind, all that you told me and more.”
“Just don’t you try to exploit her, Patrick. I won’t allow it.”
“You misunderstand me.” He turned back, and she searched his eyes for honesty. “The important thing now is to teach her. She’s going to face skepticism, fear, mistrust. She’s got to learn to hold on to her anger. She has to learn that psi isn’t a curse, it isn’t something to fight, to be ashamed of. What she’s been given is a gift, a blessed, extraordinary gift.”
“You’re forgetting the fact that she’s been involuntarily committed to an asylum and they aren’t about to let her just walk away.”
“They haven’t been playing straight with you. They know exactly what they’re doing, and I’m willing to bet there are more people involved in this than you think. Look at the tests they’ve run, the missing information. Look at her file. They’re going to try to push her. They may just push her too far.”
“What do you suggest we do?”
“She could disappear tomorrow. I know people who could make it happen. There’s a network, you understand? People just like us, who want to help, who could teach her how to live with this gift of hers. More of them than you think. Anywhere in the country, a new name, a new beginning. She’d be in good hands, capable hands.”
“You’re asking me to break the law. And what’s the difference between you and the people I’m trying to get her away from? Do you honestly expect me to believe you won’t end up pushing her too far too?”
She was struck by the intensity in his eyes. Patrick reached into a pocket of his coat. He showed her what he held in his hand; a shapeless lump of blackened plastic and metal. “It’s the number generator’s CPU. We tested the circuits before you came; there was nothing wrong with the machine. She melted it down to nothing. Do you see that? Do you understand what this means?”
“Electricity,” Jess murmured. She took the lump from him and held it in her hands; it was still slightly warm. “That’s what it feels like. Some kind of electrical charge.”
“I don’t know what it is. But I want to find out. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. The
re have been cases, once or twice a century, of people with a talent like hers. Uri Geller was one, though even his abilities were never truly proved beyond the shadow of doubt. But we all have the possibility inside us, I’m sure of it. It’s just a matter of learning how to unlock the right doors.”
“Why are you doing this, Patrick? What’s made you search these things out, what drives you?” Do you understand, I have to know before I can possibly trust you?
“You don’t want to hear that story. It’s really nothing special.”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“All right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Patrick gestured at the empty church, at the rows of pews, as if it would make her see. “My father was a minister. I grew up in churches, spent more time in them than I did at home. But my father loved God more than he did his children. At least that was the way it felt. I was always trying to impress him, make him notice me. But nothing worked.
“Then one day, I was about eight years old, I ran away from home. I didn’t get very far at first, it wasn’t a real attempt, but I remember getting lost in the woods behind our house. Those woods were deep. It got late and I remember being very frightened by the dark. And finally I remember someone speaking to me. It was my father. He said, come home, son, come this way. And I just followed his voice until I saw the house again.
“When I got to the front steps my father opened the door. He didn’t say a word, he just held out his arms. There had been people out looking for me, but my father had just stayed behind. He said he wanted to be there to guide me home.
“After that, my father and I had a special bond. I understood him and he understood me. And I never forgot that night. You don’t forget something like that.”
“Where’s your father now?”
“He died when I was seventeen. Diabetic shock. They put him in the hospital overnight, said he’d be out the next day. But I knew he was never coming back. I knew. Have you ever felt anything like that? Not a hunch, or an educated guess. When the moment comes you’re sure, you’ve never been so sure of anything your entire life. It becomes a part of you, a certainty.”
“I don’t know.” Tiredly. Yes. She thought of childhood dreams, headlights, and the scream of car’s tires, of nights waking in a choking sweat. Memories surfaced like creatures from the deep. Maybe I have. Maybe I just don’t want to admit it.
“We’re holding in our hands the key to a new kind of life, Jess. A higher life on earth. More spiritual, more peaceful, more connected. Mind over matter. Imagine die possibilities. I truly believe that it’s just within our reach.”
“Maybe so. But you’re wrong about Sarah’s being able to learn to control it. She’s barely able to hang on for the ride. And if you push her, if you try to dissect her like some kind of lab specimen, you’ll be no better than anyone else.”
The door slammed open at the other end of the church. “Two hundred beats per minute,” Gee announced, trailing paper like white fluttering birds. “Blood pressure through the roof. Her EEG was off the charts. Temperature dropped thirteen degrees, enough heat energy to lift a truck. Big one too, one of those semis with the eighteen wheels.”
“Good Lord,” Patrick whispered almost reverently. “And she was still on sodium amytal. Imagine what might have happened if she were clean?”
“I’m imagining it,” Jess said grimly. “Is that supposed to make me feel better, or worse?”
“Give me the word,” he said with urgency, facing her, holding her wrist gently between two fingers, as if he was afraid to touch her. “Just tell me and I’ll have it all planned by tomorrow. She’ll be free to live her life as normally as possible, I promise you.”
“I can’t do that. I have to go through the proper channels. It wouldn’t be fair to her. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone involved.”
Patrick looked at her for a beat. He nodded, and did not look too disappointed. Did he know something she did not? Or had he just anticipated her response?
“All right. Here’s my home number. Just tell me you’ll think about it. It’s a standing offer. For now, take her back, go home and get some sleep. You look like you could use it.”
—27—
She tried; oh, how she tried.
But back in her little apartment that evening, with the October wind whispering to get in and Otto pacing restless by the door, Jess could not think of sleep. Not now, not here, maybe not ever, with the feeling of Patrick’s kiss still haunting her lips. She didn’t know what to think of that, of him, of anything. When she closed her eyes the walls pressed in close and she couldn’t breathe, could not find herself among the voices clamoring to be heard.
Finally she set up a blank canvas on the easel at the window, mixed her paints at the sink, turning yellows into reds, swirling and dipping, smoothing, finding her place. A rough bristle will do, she thought, tonight is calling for broad, bold strokes. It was necessary to clear her head. She wished briefly she could be up in the night sky, above the clouds and under the full moon. But this late the airport would be empty, planes tied down and covered for the night like slumbering metal beasts. And she knew from experience that the need was only her desire to escape, something she had to fight against, especially now.
Her mind was free to drift back in time. She had been left alone more and more often after Michael’s death, as her mother searched for answers at the bottom of a bottle. An orphan of alcoholism. It made her more self-sufficient, but also took from her a portion of her childhood. She became the adult in a family of two. At times her mother would not come home at all, and she would have to fend for herself. It made her grow up too fast, kept her from forming a solid foundation upon which to build her life, left her with a shaken self-confidence, left her as an overachiever, a person who pushed herself to the dropping point and then pushed some more. If she had to run a mile for gym class, she would run two; if she needed a B on a test to get by, she would get an A. There were no markers for her performance, no limits set. So she set her own, always trying to prove something. That she was better than this life.
Understanding your weaknesses is the difference between a person who is led by life and a person who leads, Jess told herself. She bathed the canvas in a base of gray, a touch of lighter orange near the top to simulate the color of a coming dawn, as the 2:00 a.m. train rattled by down below. More paint, thicker strokes. White and dark playing off each other, creating shadows and light, texture and depth. The night she had returned from college her freshman year, Christmas Eve, filled with the hope of a new beginning; her mother on the phone, I’ve started going to meetings, I’m getting with the program. The tree was up and decorated for the first time in years. The living room was clean and bright and empty. Waiting on the sofa, angry, then worried, then finally hours later her mother at the door, slurring her words and stumbling, the sound of a man’s voice. Get the fuck out of here, my daughter’s home….
So she knew. The point was, she knew something of how Sarah felt. Unable to trust, to ever feel truly secure. Sarah felt like the world was out to get her. And why shouldn’t she? Jess searched for that common thread and clutched at it. She knew it was important to have a bond with the person you were trying to understand. You had to walk in her shoes.
And yet the differences were immense. At least she had been able to escape, to choose another life, to make her own decisions. Sarah had been a prisoner from the moment she could think. Her frustrations and her anger had built over years of barred windows and institutional walls.
And finally those emotions were manifesting themselves physically. The walls were coming down. Even now, after all she had seen, Jess found it hard to believe. But the proof was before her eyes, in shattered lightbulbs and a rain of stones and a piece of electronic equipment melted into oblivion; even Connor the bear, singed where Sarah had clutched him. She thought of the case of Esther Cox and her poltergeist, pots and pans flying off the walls, water boiling in pails, beds shaking and thumping up and d
own. Before she had believed it to be a clear case of psychotic delusion; now she believed otherwise. And what about Uri Geller, world-famous metal bender extraordinaire, who had been continuously denounced as a fraud and a cheat by the scientific establishment? Did she believe now that he too, along with countless hundreds of others, was the real thing?
Her painting was too dark. A storm was coming. Frowning, she dabbed white paint, lightening the clouds and searching for moonlight. The angles of shadow were wrong, the moon was not overhead, but behind…
The proof was in more than just those things too, she thought as she dabbed paint and searched for an angle of imaginary moonshine. Little more than a month ago Sarah had been a catatonic invalid, and now she spoke, thought, imagined, dreamed. You had something to do with that, Jess told herself, and from that thought arose pride, an unreasoning hope, and a long-dormant faith. It was one of those thoughts that came easily in the stillness of early morning. Where one impossibility exists, why not two? Hell, why not all of them? Why couldn’t Patrick be right in insisting that they stood on the edge of a new era of mankind?
It was a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of a single little girl. Jess put down her brush, clenched and unclenched her hands, remembering the feeling of the charge inside her, how it had coiled in her belly and then leapt from her palms like a living thing. Was that how such a power felt? Like a muscle tensed and quivering for release?
Jess knew she had found herself again. She had put her feet back firmly on the ground. She could go on, she could finish this thing now without second-guessing herself. But there were so many questions left unanswered. What were Wasserman’s real motives? And Professor Shelley. What was her role in all of this? There was something more behind Shelley’s confession that she needed to get out.
Give me the word. She’ll be free, I promise you.
No, Patrick, she thought, I won’t do that. I won’t entrust Sarah’s life to another set of strangers that take her and disappear. But there were organizations that would listen to her case. The state licensing board, mental health charter, even the American Medical Association, if it came to that.