The Truth of Yesterday

by Josh Aterovis

  I don't know how long I sat there, lost in these thoughts before Judy spoke up again. “You can't let yourself be paralyzed by indecision and fear,” she said softly. “You have to keep making decisions and fighting your battles. It's entirely possible that the purpose I sense is only within yourself. That wouldn't make it any less important, you know.”

  I shook off the dark mood I had been slipping into and gave her a tentative smile. “Obviously I need to give this a lot of thought,” I said.

  She smiled and her eyes showed relief as her whole body relaxed. “That's a good sign,” she said. “At least you are willing to think about it now.”

  “It doesn't seem like I have much choice.”

  “You always have a choice, Killian.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me? I have choices as well.”

  “No, I mean, what did your tea leaves say?”

  Her smile faltered a little and she reached almost reluctantly towards her mug. She examined the dregs and her smile faded away completely. She was so still and quiet I was afraid to move or make a sound for fear of breaking the spell. Finally, she carefully set the mug down and looked up. I couldn't read the expression in her eyes; it was almost as if she had closed shutters behind them, closing off her emotions from view.

  “Well?” I asked.

  She shook her head slightly. “Don't worry about it.”

  “But...”

  “No, I think that was a message meant for me and me alone. You'd better go before Jake comes home.” She stood and briskly began clearing the table of the mugs. She rinsed hers out before I could say another word, almost as if she was trying to wash away whatever it was she had seen at its bottom. I stood slowly and, as I started to turn and go, I was taken by a sudden urge. I spun around and grabbed Judy in a tight hug. She was surprised at first, but quickly returned the hug just as fiercely.

  “Go,” she said after a moment and gently pushed me away. She turned quickly back to the sink, but not before I saw unshed tears brightening her eyes. What had she seen in that mug that could have caused such a reaction? I wasn't at all sure I wanted to know.

  Chapter 9

  I was sitting in my room that night, alternately brooding about-what else?-Micah and my so-called Gifts. The truth was, I didn't want to deal with either of them. Generally, my defense system can be best described as the Ostrich Syndrome. In short, I stick my head in the sand and hope it goes away. I have to admit that this approach seldom works in any sort of satisfactory manner. Actually, it only serves to allow whatever situation that caused you to bury your head in the first place to bite you on your exposed rump.

  I should know; I've been bitten more than once.

  Where Micah was concerned, I knew we needed to talk; I just wasn't ready. I was still too hurt and confused. I knew a lot of that was my own doing, but I also knew that I wouldn't be able to have a rational discussion with him about any of this until I had managed to calm myself down. There was no point rushing things and just making the whole situation worse by saying things I would regret later.

  As for the Gifts, I knew Judy was right about them. That didn't mean I had to like it. I didn't want to see dead people and I certainly didn't want to talk to them. I didn't want any sort of psychic gifts. I mean, what would be next? Would I start reading tea leaves too? Would I tell fortunes at carnivals? Or maybe I should shoot for the stars and hope for my own infomercial on TV. People could call in and I'd tell them their fortunes for the low price of $2.95 a minute. On the other hand, that might be preferable to dealing with the dearly departed.

  Someone knocked on my door causing me to jump a little. “Come in,” I called. The door remained closed and no one answered. With a sigh, I heaved myself to my feet and opened the door to find the hallway empty.

  “Very funny, Kane,” I mumbled as I shut the door and turned back to the bed, only to practically jump out of my skin.

  “A bit on edge, aren't we?” Seth asked. He was sprawled across my bed, head propped on one hand, his lips twitching with barely suppressed laughter.

  “I suppose that was your idea of a joke?” I asked rather testily.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Well, you said you didn't like it when I just appear unannounced so I knocked this time.”

  “Admit it, you love scaring me.”

  “Hey, it's one of the joys of being dead.”

  “If you weren't already dead…”

  “Be nice. I came to talk to you.”

  “And that's supposed to make me want to be nice?”

  Seth rolled his eyes expressively and sat up. “Seriously, Killian. We need to talk.”

  “About what? If this is about my purported Gifts, I've already had one lecture about them today, I don't need another.”

  “Oh well, I was going to bring that up, but it's not the main reason I'm here. But while we're on the subject, have you made up your mind yet about them?”

  “No, I haven't and I don't intend to be rushed on this either.”

  “Who's rushing you?”

  “You, Judy, Adam…”

  “It's only because we care.”

  “I wish you cared a little less.”

  He frowned. “You don't mean that.”

  I sighed and sat down next to him on the bed. “No, I don't. Not really,” I admitted. “It just gets a little frustrating sometimes. I feel like I don't even have a choice in the matter.”

  “Of course you have a choice. We all have choices. Every minute of every day, we make choices. And you even have choices within the choices. Even if you decide to accept your Gifts and learn to use them, what you do with them is still up to you.”

  “Is it? What about my big purpose Judy was talking about.”

  His eyes shifted away. “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that.” I looked at him closely. “Do you know what it is?”

  He shrugged.

  “You do, don't you?”

  He cleared his throat uneasily. “You know I can't talk about that.”

  “Oh for God's sake…”

  “Exactly.”

  That stopped me. Rather hard to argue with deity. “Well, can you at least tell me how long I have to get ready?”

  He shook his head, still not meeting my eyes.

  I fought down my aggravation. It wasn't Seth's fault, and I knew that. It wouldn't be fair to take out all my frustrations on him. Then another thought occurred to me. “Is this mysterious purpose why you started coming to see me?”

  He jerked around to look me in the eye. His surprised expression was all the answer I needed. “W-why would you say that?” he stammered.

  It was my turn to shrug. “Not too many people get personal visits from their deceased friends. If the rules are being bent for me, then there must be some pretty significant reasons behind it.”

  Seth opened and closed his mouth a few times before answering. “Not too many people have your Gifts either,” he said finally.

  “And we're back to that.”

  “It all comes back to that eventually,” he said apologetically.

  “You said that wasn't the main reason you came. What was?”

  “This thing with Micah…”

  “I should have known,” I moaned.

  “It's not like that,” he said defensively.

  “Oh really? So you're not going to say don't make snap judgments? You're not going to tell me to talk things out with him? And you're not going to tell me to give him the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Ha! You don't know me as well as you think you do. I was also going to tell you that it wouldn't hurt to educate yourself before you made any decisions,” he said archly.

  I stuck my tongue out at him and then frowned. “Educate myself?”

  “Yes. About escorts.”

  I made a face. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because, before you go pulling some sort of holier-than-thou shtick you may want to know what you are condemning.”

&
nbsp; “I'm not condemning anything,” I protested.

  “Aren't you?”

  “No, I'm not.” A pause, “Am I?”

  He gave me a look that clearly said you figure it out for yourself.

  “Why is everything always so hard?” I asked plaintively. He opened his mouth to answer and I rushed on, “And please don't say that I make it hard.”

  His mouth closed with a snap and he grinned at me. “Then I don't have any other answers.”

  I grabbed a pillow from behind me and threw it at him. I was more than a little surprised when it went right through him.

  “Neat trick, huh?” he said with a self-satisfied smirk. “Oh, quit gaping. It's really not attractive.”

  “You know,” I said slowly. “I almost forget sometimes that you aren't really here.”

  “Oh, I'm here; you just forget that I'm not really alive.”

  “Why is it that you don't bother me, but Amalie does?”

  He thought a minute before responding. “Well, you knew me. We were friends. That may make it easier. Plus, it's really not quite the same thing, you know. Amalie's not really here by choice, like I am. And she can't just leave whenever she wants to and go back to the other side. She's full of pain and anger and you can't help but sense that.”

  “What do you mean I can't help but sense it? Can anyone sense it?”

  “No,” he said slowly.

  “Is it because I can see her?”

  “No,” he said again, dragging the word out.

  “Is it because I can talk to her?”

  “No…”

  “Oh great? Is this another Gift?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly? It either is or isn't. So which is it?”

  “I shouldn't have said anything,” he said sheepishly.

  “Well, you did, so explain what you meant.”

  “Have you ever heard of empathy?”

  “It's kind of like sympathy, right?”

  “Close, but not exactly. They both have to do with feelings. With sympathy, you might feel sorry for someone because of something that has happened to them, or even relate to them because you've experienced something similar. Empathy goes beyond that to actually feeling the emotions felt by the other person, experiencing them for yourself as if they were your own.”

  “I have that?”

  “To some degree. It's part of what makes you such a good investigator.”

  “How would that help?”

  “It usually makes it very easy for you to read other people, to understand their true intentions and judge what kind of people they are.”

  “The way I can sometimes just know someone is lying to me without really knowing why?”

  “Yeah. Most of the time, it's probably not even something you do consciously, it's just instinct. It's a part of who you are.”

  “That seems like it could be a useful Gift.”

  “They're all useful, Kill. They're tools, just like anything else. It can also be a handicap though. Empathy can sometimes cloud your judgment; you get so caught up in someone's pain or loss that they can manipulate you, maybe without even trying to.”

  “Like with Caleb.” I'd known instinctively that there was something wrong about him but I'd let his story of abuse and his pain overshadow that…and almost ended up dead in the process.

  “Right. Understanding your Gift, both its strengths and its weaknesses, could help you to avoid similar situations in the future.”

  “Do I have other Gifts?”

  “I don't know.” I gave him a skeptical look. “Really, I don't. I only knew about the empathy because it's a pretty obvious one and it's already manifested itself clearly.”

  “Oh,” I said in disappointment.

  He grinned.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “At least I've got you interested now.”

  “Did you do that on purpose? You manipulated me, didn't you?”

  “I honestly didn't.”

  I had the suspicious feeling that even if Seth hadn't been the one manipulating our conversation, someone somewhere was pulling some strings, and I didn't like the feeling one bit.

  Seth stood up. “Well, I've done what I came here to do. I guess I'd better be going.”

  “Wait,” I called, sitting up suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I still have questions.”

  “That's what Judy is for.”

  “Well don't just vanish. Do you have any idea how creepy that is?”

  “No,” he said with a broad wink, and then he just simply wasn't there anymore.

  “Jerk!” I yelled at the thin air.

  My bedroom door swung open to reveal a rather startled looking Kane. “What did I do now?” he asked in an injured tone.

  “I wasn't…” I started to say that I hadn't been yelling at him, but then realized that would just beg the question who had I been yelling at then. It would be difficult to explain that I had been yelling at his dead brother. I tried to think of an excuse but nothing came quickly enough.

  “You know,” said Kane, looking very hurt, “you're the one who's been a jerk lately. You're always in a bad mood and I'm really getting sick of it. You're not the only one with problems you know.”

  “Kane, I'm sorry,” I said sincerely. “I know I've been selfish and moody and I really am sorry.”

  He looked somewhat mollified. “You want to talk about it?” I offered tentatively.

  “Do you really care?”

  “Of course I care. You're my little brother.”

  With a sigh of relief, he shut the door and came to sit next to me on the bed. “It just seems like everything's been going wrong lately.”

  “Like what?”

  “Jen broke up with me, Jake's been acting weird, and it feels like our family is being torn apart.”

  “Whoa.” I didn't even know where to start. I decided to get what I thought to be the easy one out of the way first. “What happened with you and Jen?”

  “I dunno. I thought everything was fine and then suddenly she just dumped me.”

  “Were you serious about her?”

  “No, not really,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “So, it's just a matter of you not being used to being the dumped instead of the dumper, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Is this something that's going to hurt your rep as the school stud?”

  He blushed but looked perversely pleased. “Not really,” he said with a little smirk.

  “Then what's the big deal?”

  “It's not really. It just hurt my feelings. I mean, it's not like I even liked her that much. I was probably going to break up with her soon.”

  “So that's what this is really about. It's not even about being dumped really, you're just mad because she dumped you first.”

  He grinned. “Ok, yeah. You make me sound so shallow.”

  I laughed but then quickly turned serious. “So what's this about Jake?” I took a professional interest in this, but tried to keep my voice from betraying more than brotherly concern.

  “Well, you know how when he first came back we hung out a little? We weren't best friends or anything, but we did stuff together and we at least talked. Now I hardly ever see him anymore and when I do, he doesn't say a word to me. So I started asking around and all his friends say he's been acting the same way with them. He's either completely ditched them or he avoids them.”