Eye of the Beholder

by Shari Shattuck

  “It was different this time. Instead of looking at a person and seeing a figure or a shape near them, I saw an image from somewhere else, not what was in front of me—like a film, as though I were looking through Joy’s eyes.” He hesitated in his explanation, aware that his mother had come to attention. “Why would that be?” he asked her, frustrated.

  “The bracelet,” Greer whispered. “I meant it to link her to me, but it seems that you have the stronger connection.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I saw the bracelet, and her hand—she was holding something up, a key chain, I think. It was very fast; I couldn’t really make anything out.” He shook his head disgustedly. “To tell the truth, I was so surprised to see Joy’s hand in the middle of European History that I made a fool of myself and had to get the hell out of there.” His face felt hot, and he didn’t know if it was from his proximity to the fire or the memory of the malicious delight in his classmates’ expressions.

  Greer sighed deeply. “Joshua, I know this is hard for you. High school kids aren’t exactly famous for being tolerant and embracing differences.” They shared a rueful expression. Passing over that, she went on. “I’ve had that kind of image—and it’s always been future—only a few times in my life, and only in the beginning. Now I’ve learned to see the signs instead of the scenes, if that makes sense. I don’t know how your gift is different from mine, but I do know that, for me, the feeling I get from something I see is more important than what I see.”

  “I know; you told me that before.” Joshua was nodding, staring at the flickering orange coals. “I keep thinking about that; that’s what’s killing me.” He brought his hands up and raked them through his sandy hair. “Because the feeling I get is that I should be helping her.”

  Trying to steer him away from beating himself up, Greer asked, “Were the keys hers, do you think?”

  “No, they were more like something a man would carry. They were clunky and heavy, and there was some kind of charm—silver, I think.”

  “Would you recognize it if you saw it again?” Greer asked gently, not wanting to pressure him.

  Joshua turned and smiled at her wryly. “I think I might recognize the feeling of them, if you know what I mean.”

  She nodded.

  They were both quiet for a few moments, listening to the crackling logs, and then Greer reached out and took Joshua’s hand. She squeezed it softly, almost nostalgically, remembering when that hand had been far smaller and had fit in hers so willingly, when she could close her fingers around it protectively, kiss it without embarrassment or restraint. She thought to herself that things changed too quickly; life was so fragile. Nothing was as precious to her as this boy, this man, who sat beside her struggling with something bigger than either of them, and facing it with wisdom beyond his years.

  She drew in a deep breath to ease the tightness that had come into her throat before beginning to speak quietly. “Your father is the only person who never questioned me. He always believed in the interconnectedness of all things. Some of that was because of his work and his love of nature. It’s hard to spend a life studying the biology of the earth and not see the infinite number of ways that life communicates. He used to compare my gift to ducks migrating and a new generation of butterflies returning to the same tree that their parents had used. He always said that I was just listening on a different wavelength, like radio or television, something that other people weren’t tuned in to.” She laughed a fond little laugh and went on. “He used to joke that I had some kind of transmitter or tube built into me, the way other people might have a cowlick or a birthmark. Maybe he was right.”

  Joshua was watching his mother, and as always when she spoke of his father, he was struck by the love on her face. In spite of all his mother and father had been through, Joshua still got the strong impression that there had never been another man that she could love the way she’d loved him. That she had never let him go.

  “I have to believe,” Greer said, leaning toward Joshua and fixing moistened eyes on him, “that he’s there to help you. There is no way that the connection between the two of you could be broken.”

  Joshua nodded and glanced uncomfortably away. He remembered his father as a laughing, happy face that regarded him with pride and joy. Though he’d always had Dario, he’d felt the loss of his father very much in his life until it had faded into nothing more than a pleasant, dreamlike memory. He did not feel a connection to a man he so sketchily remembered—something that he had never confessed to his mother. Instead of doing so now, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

  She tilted her head to one side and spoke gently. “Because it’s time to claim your gift. You won’t suddenly understand it; you won’t be perfect in your interpretations; you will make mistakes. But”—she took a deep breath and reached out her free hand to stroke back her son’s hair—“you will not be alone.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Joshua asked, unsure of anything.

  “Because I can see it.” His mother’s eyes were shining in a very different way from when he had come into the room. “There are others helping you. They are all around you.”

  Joshua stiffened. “You can see them?” he asked incredulously.

  “Not the way you do. I sense light, several lights; each is a different color, and each one has a distinctively different energy, all good,” she added quickly. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in and then out. “They feel . . . wise and helpful. There is one—” she broke off, as though almost overwhelmed.

  “What?” Joshua asked, concerned more for her than for himself.

  Greer’s breath had quickened, and her chest rose and fell under her thick sweater. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s very strong. I don’t know who or what it is, but it’s intensely positive. I get the sense that it—or they—will protect you.” She opened her eyes and seemed to readjust to the room around her. She smiled almost sheepishly at her son. “It’s all good,” she murmured reassuringly.

  Joshua wished he could share her faith in him and her simple sentiment. But when he thought of Joy and where she might be tonight, he felt that things were anything but good. He felt that things were as bad as they could possibly be.

  Chapter 33

  Wednesday

  It was all Greer could do to pretend to be cheerful to the clients who came into Eye of the Beholder. Joy had not come home, and Greer had spent the hours from dawn until she’d left to open the shop waiting with Luke and Whitney, who had been up all night. Her sense of foreboding for Joy was growing stronger.

  Oddly, though, the Shadow Hills day proceeded normally, as though nothing had changed. The community seemed both unaware and, it seemed to Greer, uncaring that a young girl was missing, that her parents were in a living hell, that something evil lurked in its midst. Greer caught herself resenting anyone who laughed, as though, despite their ignorance of the situation, they were being callous and apathetic. Of course, she knew that this wasn’t true, and she wondered how many people in her lifetime had listened to her laugh while they suffered the way Luke and Whitney were suffering now.

  The door to the shop opened and Sterling came in. Though he smiled at Greer, his face was drawn and concerned. He came directly to her and asked, “Have you heard?”

  Greer’s heart contracted. How did Sterling know? Had she been wrong, and was Joy already hurt—or worse?

  “Heard what?” She breathed the words.

  He pointed to the flyer taped to her window. “They found that girl. She’s in a hospital in Chatsworth. She was sexually assaulted and beaten to within an inch of her life. They don’t think she’s going to make it.”

  When her head stopped spinning, the prevalent facts sank in: It wasn’t Joy, another girl had been assaulted and beaten, she was someone’s daughter, her fear and pain must be horrible, it was what Sarah had felt. Greer leaned on the desk and moaned, “Oh, no, oh, my God.”

  Sterling came around the counter and put an arm around Greer. “It
gets worse,” he told her. “She was scarred. The sicko son of a bitch branded her with the shape of an eye.” His voice rippled with anger and compassion.

  The room swam before Greer, and she was slammed with connected images: the burning eye, Joshua telling her he had seen an eye over Joy, the impending danger signs around Joy’s face in the tea leaves. She reached up and touched her forehead with one finger before turning her face up to Sterling’s. “Where? Where did he brand her?”

  Sterling looked taken aback, as though that were an odd question. “Does it make a difference?”

  Greer pulled away from him, unfairly impatient. “Yes, it does. Did they say where she was branded?”

  “On her cheek.” He looked put out. “The paper said she’d been branded on her right cheek.”

  “That’s wrong,” Greer blurted out. She knew it was wrong. The girl had been branded on her forehead, almost right between her eyes. She knew now why Joshua had seen the eye hovering over Joy—because the same sicko had her friend’s daughter. A wave of nausea raked her, and she turned and ran to the restroom, leaving Sterling standing, dumbstruck, at the counter.

  Dario had seen Sterling come in and watched in his mirror as Greer ran, hand over her mouth, to the ladies’ room. Excusing himself quickly from his client, he walked rapidly to the front. “What’s going on?” he asked Sterling.

  Sterling shook his head, bewildered. “I have no idea. I told her what I read about them finding that poor girl.” He crooked a thumb at the picture. “Did you see it in the paper?”

  Dario nodded, his handsome mouth tightening. “I didn’t tell her because her friend’s daughter didn’t come home last night, so she was upset to start out with, plus the fact that she lost a best friend when she was a teenager . . .”

  “Oh, how stupid of me; she told me that before.” Sterling ran fingers through his short-cropped hair. “I guess I should have realized how it would affect her, but I was so upset. Right here! In our community! How can someone be that twisted and nobody notice?”

  “I don’t know,” Dario said sadly.

  Sterling looked to where Greer had disappeared. “When I told her about the branding, she said, ‘That’s wrong.’ What the hell was she talking about?”

  Dario’s eyes narrowed. “She said that?”

  “I mean, how does she know?” Sterling demanded.

  “Don’t ask me to explain it. I just know not to question it.”

  Sterling started to respond to this odd statement, but they both fell quiet as the ladies’ room door opened and Greer came out, a wet cloth pressed to her mouth. She was pale and grim, and she looked very determined.

  “Are you okay?” Dario asked her. She nodded.

  “I understand now.” She turned her eyes to Sterling and took a deep breath, knowing this could be the last conversation she ever had with him, knowing how it would sound. “When the officer put up that poster, I saw a picture in my mind of a flaming eye. I didn’t know what it meant, but now I do.” She paused for breath and tried to calm her raging heart. Her blood was running like white-water rapids, and there was a roaring in her ears. “He has another girl; he has my neighbor’s daughter.” Greer’s voice cracked, but she went on. “When I first met them, I ‘saw’ the girl; she was in trouble, surrounded by danger. Then my . . .” Greer hesitated; she didn’t want to bring Joshua into it without his consent. “Then I saw Joy with the eye over her.”

  Sterling’s face was incredulous—not disgusted or afraid, but utterly surprised. So Greer turned to Dario, who she knew would believe her, would understand. “Dario, he has Whitney’s daughter; he has Joy. The man who branded that girl”—she pointed a finger at the flyer on the window—“has Joy.”

  Dario’s face was frozen as well, but his was an expression of pathos. “Oh, Jesus Christ, no.” He took two deep breaths and then seemed to pull himself together. Sterling was still frozen. “Okay, what do we do?”

  Greer glanced at Sterling as if to have a last look at what happiness could have been like, and then she said, “I have to call the police.”

  Now Sterling spoke up. “And tell them what exactly? They’re going to think you’re insane!”

  “Probably,” Greer said, turning to look at him directly. Her chest felt spongy but resilient, as though anything that hit her now would both be absorbed and bounce away. “But what else can I do? Maybe I can help them in some way. I don’t know. I just know that when I saw what was going to happen to Sarah, I didn’t do anything, and she died. I can’t let that happen again. I have to try!” The tears welled up in her voice as she spoke, the frustration and the pain imploding in her.

  “Okay, okay,” Dario soothed. “Let me turn my clients over to Jonathan, have Celia cancel all our afternoon appointments, and we’ll go to the police.”

  “No, Dario!” Greer interjected. “Not you. There’s nothing you can do, and there’s no point in complicating things.” Dario started to object, but she insisted. “Just me. You stay here and run things. I’ll call you if I need you. Have Celia cancel my afternoon.”

  Dario nodded resignedly and hurried away, leaving Sterling standing awkwardly next to a distraught Greer.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself and then said, “Thank you for telling me about the girl. I understand how weird this is, and I don’t blame you for thinking what you think.”

  Sterling looked into those green eyes, made brighter with tears the way dewdrops on leaves intensified the color, and he saw nothing but sincere honesty there. She believed what she was saying. He smiled kindly. She thought it looked like the sort of smile you gave to a confused child. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe you can help them. But may I offer one word of caution?”

  She sighed, her tiny hope that he might understand rushing away from her with a sound in her ears like wind. “Of course.”

  “Talk to her parents first. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to hear from a stranger that a psychic thought my child was in the hands of a killer.” He stood looking at her for a moment, and then turned and walked away.

  She looked after him, filled with a new, equally ghastly fear.

  How would she tell Luke and Whitney?

  Chapter 34

  At school, Joshua was distracted and distant. It was almost impossible to concentrate. Finally, feigning continued illness, he left before his last class and headed for home, praying the whole way that Joy had returned while he was at school, that she had slept off another drunk on another lounge chair and awoken to a hangover and a hazy new day.

  But when he rounded the shoulder of the canyon, the sight of multiple police cars in the shared parking area greeted him with a sobering dose of reality. Pulling the bike in between them and almost letting it drop to the ground, he ran up the stairs inside. “Mom?” he called out, not caring that his voice sounded high and girlish. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Greer appeared in the doorway to the living room. “I’m fine, honey; I’m in here.” Behind her he could see several uniformed officers and two men who were obviously detectives.

  His voice rose to a broken croak. “Joy?”

  Greer shook her head sadly. “No news. But, Joshua, I told the police what I saw.” She stressed the I, and he immediately understood that she had taken on his visions. He was both deeply grateful and shaken. Even if they could help Joy, the police would think his mom was nuts. Or worse, suspect her.

  “Mom, why?”

  She came to him and put her arms around him. He was taller than her now, but it was comforting nonetheless. “Because I saw the figure of a flaming eye over the girl whose poster they put up in the shop, and it turned out that she was branded with an eye.” Greer felt the shock wave go through Joshua as he put two and two together.

  “You saw the figure of an eye?” He felt his mother nod succinctly. She wanted to be clear that she had also seen the shape, and was not just claiming his vision. The next thought made his stomach flip upside down. “Branded?” He whispered the question.


  She pulled away enough to look straight at him. She didn’t need to tell him what that news implied and how it related to the fact that he had seen the image of an eye over Joy. “I have to help them if I can. I’m sorry if this is hard for you.” She turned to the men in the room, addressing one in particular. “Detective Sheridan, this is my son, Joshua. He and Joy Whitehorse are friends.”

  “Hello, Joshua, I’d like to talk to you in a little while, if that’s okay.”

  Joshua felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “Sure, whenever,” he muttered. “I’ll be up in my room.” He moved quickly to the stairs, away from the prying eyes of the policemen. Something about the skepticism and suspicion he saw there made him feel creepy and naked, as though they knew something about him that he didn’t. He closed the door and, for the first time, turned the brass key in the lock.

  Greer turned back to the detective. “Now, I need to ask you something,” she said to him.

  Detective Sheridan was a short, stocky man. Too many years of eating junk food, and multiple unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking, had left his skin looking rough and unhealthy. His receding hairline made him look older than his forty-six years. The top of his bare head was discolored with light brown spots, variations in pigmentation that, because his pate was shiny, reminded Greer of oil on water, but the rest of him was hard—rocklike, in fact—and he sat so still that he might have been made of granite.

  He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, waiting for her question with skepticism marbleized on his face.

  “Where was the brand? The paper said it was on her cheek. That isn’t right, is it?” she asked.

  Sheridan’s eyes dropped to his pad, and he flipped back and forth a couple of pages as though he were searching for something. The activity was completely pointless; the response was not written there. It was seared onto his memory, another in a long line of visuals that he would revisit again and again in the moment between sleep and waking, when he was unable to defend himself with practiced, well-constructed distractions. The eye wound, blistered and scabbed, right on the young woman’s forehead, scarring her for life, if she lived, like a monstrous Cyclops.