The Hidden Gift

by Ian Somers

  I now knew the name of the person who would be the focal point of all my new-found bitterness and rage. There was some joy to be had in knowing that name.

  Ross Bentley killed your sister

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An Awakening

  There was an uncomfortable mood in the house the next day. Hunter spent the majority of the morning pacing the grounds and smoking cigars. The girls watched TV shows for a couple of hours then Cathy gave her new best friend an impromptu make-over – with bizarre results. It was all very girly and I ended up alone in my room practising the dual shield again. I still couldn’t perfect it but I found that I could create a shield that allowed objects to enter it while preventing anything from escaping. The opposite of what I was trying to achieve. I christened it a reverse dual shield. It didn’t seem to have any practical applications so I simply put the day’s training down as a failure. I hated failure and I grew frustrated and used my psychokinesis to crush the golf ball to the size of a pea before shooting it out the open window and across the sprawling grounds of the Williams estate.

  After that I read more of Rudolph Klein’s writings, some of the techniques he described were extremely complex and would probably take months to learn. They weren’t the sort of manoeuvres one could practice in a bedroom anyway; they were lethal if you didn’t get them right. One was called the Vacuum Cycle and it involved spinning energy around you then sucking it into your body, which if not done correctly could result in instant death. Needless to say I wasn’t very eager to try it out.

  At 6pm I left my room and went downstairs. Cathy and Sarah had gone for a walk to the nearby lake. Hunter was sitting by the back door, which was slightly ajar, picking at a bowl of pasta. I stood next to him and the sudden caress of cool evening air made me shiver.

  ‘Winter’s not far away,’ I said as I zipped up my hoodie. ‘I can feel it in the air.’

  ‘Wow, that’s so perceptive of you. Perhaps it’s a gift the Guild never knew about – you could be the world’s first season predictor.’

  ‘You’re a real funny guy, Hunter.’ I shut the door and sat next to him at the table. ‘You don’t seem worried about the predictions that Sarah keeps making.’

  ‘You’ll have to get used to people trying to kill you, Bentley. This is what life is like in the Guild. There’s always going to be some nasty git hunting you down, or you’ll have to hunt them down. Either way, your life is always on the line.’

  ‘I accepted that months ago. It’s the way she described the tin man that has me on edge.’

  ‘I’ll admit it is unusual – sinister even – but Cathy was right when she said that the child can’t accurately articulate the visions she’s having. This isn’t what you want to hear, but we’ll just have to wait and see. This person will show up sooner or later and we’ll just have to wait for him. We can’t go looking for him as we have no clue to his identity.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’re so calm about it all.’

  ‘Worrying solves nothing.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I can stop myself from doing it.’

  I wanted to continue the conversation, but the door bell interrupted us. Hunter didn’t budge so I left the table and plodded along the hallway to the door. I was expecting to see Cathy and Sarah returned from their evening stroll by the lake, instead I was looking out at five rather sombre faces.

  I stood back and fully opened the door to let them in. Peter Williams was first, followed closely by two elderly women. One had a walking stick and looked about a hundred years old. The other was a heavy woman with serious eyes. Behind them were Angela and John Portman, whom I’d met at Romand’s funeral. Angela smiled and said ‘hello’. Her husband was dour and simply nodded as he passed me in the hall.

  I followed them into the kitchen where they sat at the long dining table with Hunter, who didn’t look too pleased to see them. They asked him where Sarah was and Hunter simply said, ‘Gone out.’

  ‘Could you be more vague?’ Angela Portman said sarcastically.

  ‘Probably could if I wanted to,’ Hunter replied. I tried hard not to laugh; his quirky sense of humour and argumentative attitude were actually quite funny when they weren’t directed at me.

  ‘Is Cathy with her?’ Peter Williams asked as he slumped into a chair at the head of the table.

  ‘No, I let her leave the house on her own – of course she’s with Cathy!’

  ‘Your social skills need a lot of work, Hunter,’ John Portman said dryly. ‘And a pinch of respect wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘I could give you the same advice.’

  ‘Enough!’ Mr Williams snapped. This was the first time I’d ever seen him lose his cool. He had the look of a man under immense pressure and his face appeared even older than it normally did. ‘Hunter, could you please go and look for the girls. Now is not a good time for them to be wandering the countryside without an escort.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ He got up and saluted the older man before storming away from the table. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

  I was left standing under the arched entrance to the hallway not knowing what to do with my hands. They were all looking at me, which happened a lot since The Million Dollar Gift competition. It always made me feel awkward.

  ‘Ross, would you come sit with us for a moment?’ Mr Williams asked.

  A chair slid from under the table on its own. I didn’t know which of them was psychokinetic, but the manner in which the gift was used only heightened my unease. I reluctantly sat in the empty chair and felt like a frog about to be dissected by a group of overzealous biology students.

  ‘You’ve met the Portmans before, right?’ Mr Williams continued. ‘Yes, at poor Romand’s funeral … such a dreadful day that was. Sitting next to you,’ he indicated the ancient-looking woman with the walking stick ‘is Clarissa Yenver. She is the oldest member of the Guild, she’s retired now of course but she remains the wisest of us all. And to my right,’ he held his wrinkly hand out to the dark-skinned woman, who had been watching me very carefully, ‘is Pamela Powell. She lives in Florida, and travelled here when she got word that we were tracking a prophet.’

  ‘I have a lot of experience with prophets,’ Powell said to me. A smile grew on her face, but her eyes remained serious. ‘The Guild always notifies me when they find one.’

  ‘How does anyone become an expert in that field?’ I asked.

  ‘Being a prophet helps.’

  ‘You see into the future?’

  ‘Not much anymore. But when I was young I had a lot of premonitions. That particular gift diminishes with age and as you can tell, I am in the autumn of my years. No one can ever be an expert on such an unpredictable power, but I’ve learned how to cope with its unpredictability, which is very important because I can teach what I’ve learned to younger people who have this gift.’

  ‘I’ve heard most prophets go nuts and end up killing themselves.’

  ‘Can you blame them?’

  ‘No, not after spending a few days with Sarah. These visions she’s been having about the tin man are totally freaking me out.’

  ‘She’s had another?’ Mr Williams butted in.

  ‘Yeah, last night.’

  ‘About the same man?’ Yenver asked, her voice was very dignified, but a little shaky.

  ‘The same. She keeps referring to him as “the tin man” and she insists that he’s going to kill us all.’

  ‘So, it was the same premonition?’

  ‘Not quite. There’s been one addition that I can’t say was very pleasant to hear.’

  ‘What did she add?’ Mr Williams asked.

  ‘She said that this killer was coming after one person in particular – me.’

  There was silence for a moment. Not because they were speechless; each of them looked like they wanted to say something, just not in front of me.

  ‘Hunter thinks it’s a pile of crap,’ I explained, ‘and Cathy thinks the girl is misreading what she is seeing.’

&nb
sp; ‘And what do you think?’ Powell said to me.

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Why? You don’t know me, so how would you know what way my mind works?’

  ‘When someone tells you that a man made of tin is going to kill you, it’s hard to dispel that sort of thing from your mind, no matter who you are. It’s the sort of thing that would keep you up at night.’

  ‘All right, all right. Personally, I think she’s genuine. So, that means there is some lunatic out there who’s going to try to kill me. And I have no idea why he’s after me.’

  ‘Why …’ Yenver sighed. ‘Why is the most important question we have to ask ourselves. If we can deduce why this tin man is after you, we may be able to uncover his identity.’

  ‘Agreed,’ John Portman said. ‘Why would someone want to kill Ross?’

  ‘Maybe it has something to do with The Million Dollar Gift,’ I suggested. ‘I think Paul Golding would love to see me dead.’

  ‘Paul Golding wants to kill all of us,’ Angela Portman replied. ‘I’m sure he’d love to see Ross suffer, but he wouldn’t be hunting him exclusively. Golding thinks like a business man, his mind is a financial one and there’s little room for sentiment of any description. He’d only come after Ross if he thought he posed an immediate threat to his empire.’

  ‘Perhaps he does.’ I said.

  ‘Angela is right,’ Mr Williams said through knotted fingers. ‘There must be something else behind this.’

  ‘Ross has only been involved in three incidents,’ Angela continued. ‘It must be related to one of them.’

  ‘That would make sense,’ her husband said. I noticed he only agreed with the others’ comments, and didn’t voice any opinions of his own. Now I realised why Hunter wasn’t happy to take a lecture from him.

  ‘The Million Dollar Gift,’ his wife said. ‘I would rule that one out, for the reasons I just gave. Golding was the only person to lose out because of what happened but it wasn’t serious enough for him to have some sort of vendetta against Ross. Then there was the death of Marianne Dolloway.’

  ‘Marianne was a complete loner,’ Mr Williams said with a shake of his head. ‘She had no family or friends to avenge her. The closest person to her was Golding.’

  ‘That only leaves the death of Ania Zalech,’ Angela said.

  ‘She was much the same as Marianne,’ Mr Williams replied. ‘She has no living relatives now and had little contact with the outside world, apart from her time with the Guild.’

  ‘There is one other explanation,’ Powell interrupted. ‘This vision could be of a time far into the future. It might be years from now that this tin man comes after Ross. I’m sure he will make some enemies in the years ahead.’

  ‘True,’ Mr Williams sighed. ‘We’ll only know after we’ve probed the girl’s mind properly.’

  ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for a metal killer,’ I said angrily. ‘Now I know why most people don’t like prophets. Sorry,’ I raised my hands to Powell. ‘No offence, but being able to see into the future doesn’t make dealing with it any easier.’

  ‘No one ever said it did.’ Powell’s smile had faded. There was something about her that made me nervous. Anyone with the ability to hold a stare for as long as she could was to be avoided. ‘But sometimes it can save lives and Sarah’s gift may save yours in time.’

  ‘Or it might give me a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Young people,’ Yenver giggled. ‘Such a wonderful sense of humour.’

  None of the others saw the funny side of it and the tension in the room remained.

  ‘We’ll question the girl tomorrow,’ Powell announced. ‘Let her have a rest this evening. It will be easier if she’s feeling fresh.’

  ‘Very well,’ Mr Williams replied. ‘It’s been a long day for us all and I’m sure we’ll prefer to tackle this after a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Amen,’ Powell said. Finally she drew her eyes from mine and left the table.

  Mr Williams showed the others to the spare rooms where they’d sleep for the next few nights. After that he invited me to his study, saying he wanted to talk some things over. It was a small room in a part of the house that was rarely used. It was cluttered with books and towers of paper, old video cassettes, and some ancient-looking papyrus scrolls. There was a small desk in the centre of the circular floor and Mr Williams sat behind it. I dragged a chair from the corner of the room and sat opposite him. We chatted about Rudolph Klein’s writing on psychokinesis and I told him I couldn’t get the dual shield right, but he was very impressed that I had created an inverted version of it; apparently it was an extremely difficult thing to do. I still couldn’t see how it could be of any use, but praise was hard to come by and his kind words made me feel a little better about myself.

  He went on to explain that Yenver and Powell would try to decipher Sarah’s puzzling visions. Apparently, they’d gotten to the bottom of things like this many times before. I responded by telling him I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know what the cryptic visions meant.

  ‘You are under the protection of the Guild now,’ he said. ‘No one will get to you.’

  ‘That didn’t stop Marianne from tracking me down.’

  ‘Mistakes were made. We have learned from our mistakes, have we not?’

  ‘Yes …’ He said it like he was talking about the Guild, but I knew he was really asking me if I’d learned from the mistake that led to Romand’s death.

  ‘You need something to get your mind off this dark business.’ He started looking over the many shelves. ‘Some reading will be a healthy distraction.’

  ‘Not more of Klein’s work,’ I moaned. ‘It’s all very informative, but it’s boring as hell!’

  ‘Yes, he was a tad wearisome at times.’ He unlocked a drawer under his desk and took out some pages held together with a large steel clip. ‘However, it is necessary for you to familiarise yourself with his teachings.’

  I took the stack from him. It looked like I had a tedious couple of days ahead of me.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness for a number of hours. Dr Walters and her team spoke to me, but their words were no more than echoes at first. As the day grew old the voice of Dr Walters became coherent and she told me what had happened. She said the operation did not go smoothly and that I almost died at one point. The surgery had taken seventeen hours to complete and a further thirty-six hours had passed before my eyes had opened.

  It was only when the sedatives eased off, and the medical team had left me alone in the room, that I became aware of the buzzing coming from my throat every time I took a breath. It sounded like someone running a plectrum up and down a steel guitar string when I inhaled and exhaled. It was a coarse and unnatural noise, one that would send a chill up a person’s spine. I smiled as I listened to the electronic scraping sound as my chest rose and fell. I needed to be feared if I was to contend with my enemies, and the noise of my breathing would help me in that respect. I would also need to move my head if I was to make a start on my recovery and I concentrated on lifting myself off the pillow

  There was another sound as my chin fell to my chest and my head slowly rose up. This was like drawing a sword from a sheath. It was a smoother and more seductive noise, but just as unnatural as the sound of my breathing.

  The operation had indeed been a success. I was able to lift and turn my head; not like I once had, but it meant I was functional again, and that’s all I needed. My gifts would do the rest. My face felt very tight when I moved my head around, as if the skin was wrapped too tightly across my skull. It was unsettling, but there were more important matters to deal with. Getting out of bed was my first mission.

  I wrapped my hands around the guard rails on either side of the mattress then tried to physically pull myself forward. My strength quickly gave out and I fell back. I would have to use my gift of psychokinesis if I wanted to leave the be
d.

  It took almost ten minutes to create enough energy to push my body up off the mattress. I hovered above the bed then slowly rotated in the air, like an astronaut in zero-gravity. My bare feet tensed up as they met the cool tiles, my legs shook as they took my weight. I used my power to straighten myself and to remain steady.

  It had taken a monumental effort just to stand up, but it would get easier once the sedatives wore off. I could feel the drugs in my system. They made me weak – the one thing I hated more than anything. I had to rid myself of this parasitic poison that flowed through me!

  I summoned my gift of mageletonia and used it to force some of the debilitating drug from my body, by pushing it out the pores of my skin. I felt instantly stronger and was now able to stand without the use of psychokinesis. I still needed it to walk forward and had to create kinetic crutches to stop myself from falling over. I was up and moving about at last.

  It was only then that I detected the other drug in my system. It was deeper and stronger than the sedative. I was clever enough to know I would require some cocktail of narcotics to help my body cope with the implants, and that is what I was feeling. But there was something more …

  This new drug was coming to the fore now that the sedative was forced out. It was coursing through my veins and it was having an unexpected influence on my brain. I was feeling intense anger. It had no direction. I was angry with everything. I wanted to kill everyone. I wanted to destroy the world and all in it. It was overwhelming me. I was very good at suppressing my emotions, but now I could not contain them …

  I dropped to my knees and threw my hands over my face. The anger was too much. It felt like my head was going to explode. This anger was drawing in too much energy and I was becoming too powerful. If I did not quench the fury I would literally explode – and the entire building would go with me.

  I quickly used mageletonia to pull the sedative back through my pores and into my bloodstream and within seconds I began to calm down. I sucked in deep breaths and managed to climb back to my feet after a few moments.