The Ethereal Vision

by Liam Donnelly

CHAPTER 1 — NORA

  Psionic: “of or pertaining to the telepathic, psychic, or paranormal.”

  Dublin, Ireland.

  Nora rarely spoke or thought of the psychic events that occurred around her daughter Jane as she was growing up. The two of them had lived a largely solitary existence since her husband, Tom, had left when Jane was eight years old. She was bringing in groceries from the car and found herself trembling slightly as the scant memories she had of the accident threatened to enter her mind again. On that night ten years ago, the events that had begun to unfold in the world outside their small existence exploded into view right before them, breaking their quiet family life into pieces.

  The accident itself brought into focus the reality of just how different Jane was. In the aftermath, Nora found that she herself had adjusted rather quickly, though it seemed clear in retrospect that she hadn’t really been given a choice; she had to be strong for Jane.

  She wondered for a brief second as she walked into the dim kitchen and placed a box of cereal into a press just how much trauma she had kept hidden from herself and whether it would one day manifest itself in some dramatic fashion. She drank sometimes, but not much—a few glasses of wine here and there. But once in a while, after a night shift, one or two glasses would turn into two or three.

  She didn’t want to think about the man in the black suit who had called to their house all those years ago, but the memory returned now reflexively. She was returning to the car to retrieve more groceries—milk, eggs and chocolate—and suddenly he was right there in front of her again. She stopped on the steps for a second and gasped as she stared out at the quiet winter night. She scanned the road directly in front of her and then looked up the street from left to right as the remaining dim light of January faded over the rooftops and dusk receded. There was no one there; the road was completely empty. She forced herself onward.

  Back then, she had known that the men had come to take her daughter from her; Jane had prepared her for this. The recollections of these events had faded from her life in the years following the accident and the appearance of this man, but now, for some reason, they were returning—forcefully.

  His name was Lucas, she recalled, and his presence had repulsed her then as the memory did now. With her daughter present during that encounter, she could peer beneath his veneer just a little. It was something she found herself able to do sometimes when Jane was around. It was as though there was a window right next to her, forever gilded shut, but Jane had the key and sometimes—just sometimes—the window would open an inch or two and she could see.

  Of course, Jane’s raw talent would forever be locked away from Nora’s understanding. She knew this, but once in a while she was granted a brief, momentary glimpse of the person behind the face. She had felt darkness and obsession, and at that moment she had pulled her awareness back and shut herself off from him entirely. These fleeting glimpses were brief and sporadic, and they made her pine for the knowledge that there was a world her daughter could see into that she, Nora, would forever be locked out from. Perhaps it was for the best, though, she had surmised over the years. She had wondered (without asking, of course), what it was like for her daughter to be able to see and feel such things.

  She went back inside and proceeded through the darkness down the hallway and into the kitchen. She stopped cold as she placed the bags on the table. She had the distinct impression that the man, Lucas, was going to come again; it was just a matter of time. Eventually, he would show up on their doorstep and look for a reason to take Jane. Somewhere in her memory, she felt—remembered—a presence; some unknown force had been counterbalanced against him and his intrusion into their life. What had it been? Would it stand against him if he came again?

  Nora glanced around the dark kitchen, and her teeth chattered just a little. She took a deep breath, walked over to the door and turned on the lights. They flickered on and the stark corners of the faded white kitchen cabinets emerged from the blackness. Suddenly, the memory and the present thoughts of Lucas were no longer as clear. She returned to the living room and turned on the lights there too, noticing, as she did, the copy of a book she had bought many years previously.

  Reading was one of her many pastimes that had atrophied over the years, but she had made time for this book. She had found a second-hand copy online; it had been available only in paperback. The title was First Visions, and its very subject concerned her daughter. She hadn’t read all of it, but she could tell that the author had been a wise, benign man. She didn’t want to think about that now though, so she returned to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

  Jack would be coming over tomorrow night for Chinese food. She smiled at the thought. Then, as she thought about the work schedule ahead of her, the smile slowly faded. She was standing in front of the sink and noticed a few dirty cups sitting next to it. She picked up one and began to wash it. There was a claustrophobic feeling in her chest when she thought about the work she did to provide for herself and her daughter. She had two hours before she had to return to the computer screen in the makeshift office with the fluorescent lights for the night shift.

  For most of the previous five years, she had questioned—in the few spare moments she had—how she ended up there. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking of her art supplies, now stored in the attic. She moved instinctively to get them, following an impulse to create that she had suppressed for years, but stopped just as quickly, her body locked in place. She looked up and out through the window over the sink. Her eyes slowly opened and closed.

  She braced herself as the images began to rise in her mind once again.

  A glass of chocolate milk sliding across a desk.

  A rattling dinner plate.

  And, of course, the car…

  Then the memory that almost caused her entire body to seize up with ancient trauma resurfaced. In her mind’s eye she saw the road disappear below them as the car sailed over the edge of the cliff…

  NO… No!

  Not now! Please!

  Her hands opened, and the single wet cup she had been holding fell into the sink and smashed. She was glad; the memory, at least for now, was gone. She wiped her hands and went into the sitting room.

  She sat down and turned on the television, going through the channels rapidly. The image of the car and the darkened, slick country road that had led to the accident threatened to return again. There was a devastating realness to the memories that had not been there before. They were now, somehow, more dangerous. Why is that? she wondered, and after a moment the answer came to her: Because something’s coming, Nora.

  When memories of the car accident no longer threatened to enter her mind, she pressed the mute button on the remote control. What is it that’s coming exactly? she asked, but there was no answer this time.

  The situation around the world regarding people like her daughter had reached climactic proportions. In their generation, these heretofore unseen abilities had arisen spontaneously and unexpectedly while the world had been distracted by massive technological growth. Until then, it had been unknown that there was another appendage growing beneath this; the plane of the psychic was being breached, and the world of man seemed set to make another departure from the sea from whence it came. The word “psychokinetic,” once a mainstay only of comic book fiction, had become common, but also a taboo word to use in public.

  Neither the word nor the abilities frightened Nora. It was what they represented to her and her life that really frightened her, and she was only sometimes able to make this distinction. She did not know exactly what the extent of her daughter’s ability was, but she had seen her perform—on many occasions—what had become known most commonly as macro manifestations of this ability. Immediately, the thought that came to mind was the day they were in Wexford and the snarling dog had approached Jane, who was then only seven years old.

  It had been nine o’clock in the morning. Jane had always risen early and gone out to play with her friends, bu
t it was early in the summer and Nora’s family was first to arrive on the site. Nora heard Jane rise early and close the door behind her, going out to play. Nora got out of bed, knowing that once she was awake she would not go back to sleep. She put on her dressing gown and went to make tea.

  She poured the water, then stopped breathing. Her hand froze over the kettle as she placed it back on the basic stove. She looked around the silent cabin, trying to figure out what had changed. Finally, the thing that she had been aware of on only an unconscious level became clear: she could no longer hear the wheels on Jane’s bike, which made a slight whirring sound as she rode it.

  She walked to the door and saw Jane sitting on her bike with her helmet on (good girl). There was a dog approaching her child now. It was a collie mixed with some other breed Nora could not discern, and it was large. Immediately, Nora knew there was a problem. The dog was not looking forward so much as glaring from holes in its face. Foam dripped from its mouth in looping tendrils, and its lips were pulled back behind its teeth.

  The dog was now fifteen feet from her daughter and had begun to snarl. Jane did not react with desperation. She stayed on her bike, returning the dog’s glare with a strange calm that seemed somehow to leak out into the space around her. The dog lunged at her then, suddenly, with desperate, glaring eyes flying through the air.

  Nora took a desperate step forward to protect her daughter when something changed; the air shifted. She gasped as the shockwave washed over her and her body jerked like a puppet. She looked down as the teacup in her hand fell to the floor, liquid spilling out of it in spiralling brown arcs. She could feel the energy then—even behind the glass door—as though space itself had rippled around her, and this strange force had come from her daughter’s mind. Nora hadn’t known then how she knew this; it was just something that was obvious, like the color of the sky.

  The dog was captured in this wave of energy, as though a pair of invisible hands had hooked around it. Shock briefly registered on its face, then it was snarling again. The dog flew backward through the air. It landed fifteen feet away, rolled over a few times and slowly sat up. It took one confused look in their direction, then limped away, disappearing into the trees at the edge of the field. Jane had then resumed cycling in a circular pattern on the green in front of their cabin while humming the theme tune to one of her favorite cartoons.

  Nora smiled now as she recalled her reaction to this event. It was the first time she had ever witnessed a psychic event of that magnitude up close and personal—a macro manifestation. To Tom, her then-husband, she had said nothing about it. It was another year or so before she allowed her mind to return to it completely in the brief recesses of night when she couldn't sleep. She would once again see the snarling face of the dog and feel—yes, feel—the shockwave, as this heretofore unknown energy poured out of her daughter’s mind and into the space around them.

  She knew the word well now—psychokinesis. Of course, everyone did. It was heard on television, heard on the radio and frequently referenced on the internet, usually accompanying words like telepathy, clairvoyance and the one phrase that had begun to appear most commonly, the blanket phrase that substituted for all these abilities: The Ethereal Vision. It was a perilous subject, dangerous to discuss and perhaps even dangerous to think about.

  In a desperate panic one night, with the fear that her daughter would be taken from her, Nora had gone to the internet and searched desperately until, eventually, she found scant pieces of information. A man in a discussion forum indicated that facilities existed, built supposedly for the purpose of rehabilitation, with the word rehabilitation written in italics. There was more than one in North America, but the specific locations were not known. The one in Paris was the most well-known and widely discussed among those who were brave enough to carry out such conversations openly on the internet. It was also thought that there was a facility in Asia and, although its exact location was not known, it was suspected that it was in Hong Kong.

  Presently she stood, returned to the kitchen and began to prepare dinner. Still, as it often did, the subject remained in her thoughts, and the speeches came flooding back to her now, their voices echoing ominously in her mind:

  People who have the ability to manifest thought as action cannot and must not be allowed to enter normal society. How are they to drive cars? Or consume alcohol? Or have an argument without causing devastation?

  For some reason, as she prepared dinner, she thought of Wexford again. She and Tom had begun to spend their summers there many years ago. This had been before Jane had exhibited what Nora could only presume was an extreme level of psychic ability. Nora’s mind flashed with warm memories of friends, afternoon glasses of red wine in the sun and feelings of sea air and sand on her legs wet with water. She smiled for a moment as she basked in the memories.

  She allowed her mind to run over the cabin. Somewhere, in a dim memory, she heard the sound of a basketball bouncing by itself in the twilight as she looked through netted curtains. Jane had been standing ten feet from it, giggling, her friends obviously having gone to bed by then. Nora smiled despite the mild fear even this memory evoked in her. Nora was not afraid of her daughter—not at all, never. What she was afraid of was what Jane’s unusual abilities represented: danger and the chance that she would one day be taken from her. Images of the cabin flowed through her mind as she made dinner.

  The front door… where is the key? It’s in the desk drawer in the hallway. What about gas? It’s winter—there’ll be nowhere to… I can get one of those portable ones and have it stashed away. Electricity will be switched off… I can bring candles. Jack will help me…

  She stopped what she was doing and looked out the window in front of her. Why am I thinking about Wexford? she pondered, and the answer came back to her: You might need a good place to hide soon, Nora.