Vito opened his eyes and let the vision die away. It seemed to be no use, this demons presence had been too much. It had overwhelmed the area and little else remained here. Vito knew this part of the investigation had finished. He could get nothing further by staying here. That much was clear. So Vito pulled his coat tight once more and walked back up the alleyway to the street, puddles turning into rippling chaos as he stepped in them.
Reaching the side walk Vito stopped and looked down the street, no one seemed to have noticed Vito’s investigations within the alleyway. Looking to his left Vito watched the street walkers milling about the sidewalk waiting for cars to pull up looking for some fun. They were his next line of inquiry, and he thought he might as well get started. Before he walked over to them he pulled out a leather wallet and opened it up once to check it. Everything seemed to be ok, the card with his photo on it declaring him to be a Private Detective registered in the USA sat there ready to be put to use. So Vito pushed it into his pocket and headed down the street to the waiting ladies of the night. A girl looked round as he approached her, the nearest one of the pack. He flipped open the wallet and showed her his hands in a gesture of peace.
‘Hi there,’ he said in his best fake American accent, ‘Can I speak to you for a second?’
She’s been gone for a week now, and there’s no trace of her at all. The full extent of her planning has come to light, including the money she took from my office and the food from the kitchens. This wasn’t some random teenage impulse, this was planned for well in advance. We put word out the moment we knew she’d left the premises, and filed a missing persons report with the police shortly after that, but she’s long gone by now. She could be anywhere in the world if she was clever enough, and if I know Amanda as well as I think I do, then I doubt she’ll be in Ireland any more, and I have no idea if I will ever see here again.
- An old Diary entry of Emmanuel Page, Mother Superior of St Mary’s Orphanage
Curiosity
Donegal, Ireland
Late August
Amanda was slouched deep into the comfy chair in the living room of the cottage; her bare feet crossed and up on the coffee table just in front of the chair she sat in. The day approached mid-morning and the heat of the August summer sun had already started to build again today, it looked like it would be another hot one.
She had already been for a run this morning, getting back a few hours ago and tucking into her breakfast after a cool shower. Gentle Water had left the cottage when she had emerged from the shower and would probably be up at the clearing meditating before their Martial Arts lesson today. They had lessons most days usually taking Sundays and one day in the week off to do other things. Gentle Water would often go off for walks and disappear for the whole day while Amanda either pottered about the house or went into the village to stock up on supplies.
Amanda loved Ireland and the countryside, even though there seemed to be very little to do. Each day blended into the other with very little to separate them. Amanda didn’t work, she didn’t need to and Gentle Water seemed to have plenty of money as well, often returning from his days away with money, always cash, which he gave to Amanda to pay for his share. He always brought too much though and it now slowly filled a large jar in the kitchen. Amanda didn’t know where he got the money from, she guessed a bank, but she wasn’t too bothered about it either, he paid his share which was good enough for her.
It had been a few weeks since Gentle Water had moved in, and things seemed to be going well. Living alone in this house that reminded her so much of Georgina felt like a mixed blessing. She loved the house, but when she sat in the lounge alone at night, her thoughts often drifted back to her friend. She soon found out that Gentle Water had been travelling around Europe and found he particularly loved Ireland, he’d been staying in a Bed & Breakfast place not too far from her and he’d mentioned looking for somewhere more permanent. Amanda had been thinking about asking him to move in for a while anyway, but on finding out he needed somewhere anyway she saw no reason to delay, so she finally suggested it. She’d been a little concerned about having him move in, she wasn’t sure how well she knew him or if he might annoy her or take over the place, but she needn’t have worried, he moved in with very little fuss with only a few belongings to his name. He kept to himself and was no trouble at all, besides, Amanda liked having someone living here, the company did her good, helping her move on more and be more positive about things. She did have to stop walking about the cottage naked or just in her underwear though, something she used to do back in her apartment in New York, as well as here after Georgina had passed away. There’d been a couple of near misses, but she felt more used to him being here now.
After Georgina had passed away Amanda had stayed in the smaller second bedroom, feeling like she couldn’t sleep in the room which her friend has passed away in. The fact that one of them would have to have her room if she invited Gentle Water to live with her turned out to be the biggest hurdle to jump before she asked him.
In the end, she chose to take the main bedroom for herself, which was tough at first, but she soon got used to it.
She quickly discovered that Gentle Water enjoyed Calligraphy, and would spend hours perfecting a single Chinese or Japanese character, Amanda thought he was very good, but he remained very modest about his talent. Amanda had only just convinced him to hang a few of these works of art around the cottage and hoped to have a few more up in due course.
One of the earliest things Amanda had been interested in as she had grown closer to Gentle Water was his name, it wasn’t Chinese sounding at all. It had taken a little while for her to pluck up the courage, but she did finally ask him why he had such a name.
As it turned out, the name had been given to him at a young age by his Master at the Temple where he grew up and learnt his Martial Art; ‘it was tradition’ he had said. Amanda had been fascinated, but had heard of similar things happening around the world as people reached important ages and other mile stones. She knew little about his master other than her being a European woman who had lived a good portion of her life in the Far East.
Amanda didn’t want to pry too much, Gentle Water had turned out to be quite a private man and spoke little, often spending time in his room rather than watching television with Amanda in the evenings. She didn’t mind, she liked her own company anyway, and she respected that he needed his space as much as she needed hers.
Amanda felt much calmer about Georgina now, there had been a few tears here and there, but nothing like what there had been in the past. She felt very much over it all now, and could think back to her times with Georgina and not get upset, she just remembered the good times and sometimes found herself giggling to a joke they had shared during their friendship.
The few times she had cried in front of Gentle Water, he had been kind and considerate, sometimes holding her close while she wept. She was grateful to him for everything he had done so far, it looked like she might have another good friend in him, and unlike Howie, there was no attraction either way between them, Gentle Water seemed to treat her very much like a daughter or a niece, which had been something that had been missing from her life up until now. She had had mother figures in the Orphanage, as well as friends and equals in New York, but in Gentle Water, she found something of a father figure which was new to her, but also very welcome.
Losing and gaining friends was nothing new to her really, in the final days of her time in the Orphanage, she had slowly grown more distant from Alicia. She had probably, subconsciously been preparing herself for the move to New York City, making it easier to do by having fewer ties.
Amanda had been fascinated by New York for a long time, but as she had progressed through her early teenage years that interest had grown into something more like an obsession. Not only did she want to go to New York, she needed to go there. As the weeks and months passed, she eventually turned a corner in her thinking and committed herself to doing this and going to New Yor
k. As she planned it, she drew away from Alicia and any extraneous social contact, growing more and more distant as she neared the time of her departure. She remembered she had spent a lot of time in the Library, trying to figure out how she would make the crossing to Manhattan. She didn’t have a passport, no money, so it looked nearly impossible. But she had finally hit upon one idea, and that had been the idea of stowing away on a ship. It seemed like a possibility to her, and had been the only option she could find, so she made her plans.
At fifteen years old she finally did it, and on a cold April morning she slipped out of the Orphanage – she’d been off the grounds many times before, so this was nothing different – and caught a bus in Donegal to Belfast. She had a pack of provisions with her and some money she had stolen from the Convent to see her through.
Upon reaching Belfast, she had made her way to the docks, and waited until nightfall before sneaking into the fenced off Cargo area, but then her plan consisted of finding a Ship to America and boarding it. It was only when she was inside the Docks that she realised the difficulty of what she had to do.
In the end, she had sneaked a look at a Cargo Manifest that had been carelessly placed to one side while the Dock Hand was having a break. As it turned out, her luck had held, and there was a ship being loaded up for New York now. After that, she simply sneaked her way onboard the right ship and hid.
The sail over to the USA seemed to take forever, but she had supplies and made herself as comfortable as she could. Her next worry was then getting out of the American Docks without being caught. But it seemed her luck had held strong, and under the cover of darkness once more, she had been able to sneak off the ship and out onto the streets. Amanda had grown up quickly in New York, having to fend for herself and make her own way had hardened her and made her a survivor.
These days she sometimes felt much older than her actual years, but having Gentle Water there, a parent figure, seemed to just ease the pressure off her a little bit, so that she didn’t need to be the mature adult all the time. She was once more learning to enjoy life like she used to do, something she had missed although she hadn’t known it. The responsibility of being there for Georgina through those final weeks had clearly taken its toll.
The Martial Arts really helped with this. Training was a real joy, she could focus all her pent up frustration and anger into her punches and kicks, let it all out and free herself from these feelings which were doing her no good at all. The early sessions had often ended with tears streaming down her face as she found release for the final vestiges of her grief.
But now she was just enjoying it, enjoying the feeling of working her body and putting herself through her paces. She enjoyed pushing herself and seeing if she could do more, faster, longer, harder. Gentle Water didn’t go easy on her either, he wasn’t at all gentle in fact when it came to pushing her and making sure she did her best.
Amanda had remained fit from her training in New York and from just generally being active, but her weeks of training and running while out in Ireland had really kicked it up a notch. She had started getting some definition in the muscles on her arms, legs and body now, she even had a bit of a six pack when she tensed up in the right light, and yet she kept her feminine curves and shape as well.
It felt good, she felt better about herself now than she had done for a long time. A calm seemed to surround her at the moment, after the thrills and spills of New York, the tranquillity of the Irish countryside was a god send.
That said, one thing did still bother her a little bit, it wasn’t a major cause for concern, but it remained there like a slight twinge you couldn’t scratch but that wasn’t so annoying as to drive you mad.
She’d continued seeing some strange things every now and then, and they seemed to be getting a little more frequent of late. They were hard to describe, it felt like when you think you’ve seen something out the corner of your eye, and then you turn and it’s gone, or when something has moved mysteriously while your backs turned but then you wonder if it wasn’t just in your mind and it had always been there.
The freakiest things were when things actually did move, apparently appearing to hand out of nowhere or just moving of their own accord to her hand when she needed them. Again it had always been a subconscious thing, and always just out the corner of her eye. It had been going on for a while now and she wasn’t getting used to it, the unpredictability of it remained the worst part, you never knew when it would happen.
But these strange little events were enough to make her try to do it purposefully, and Amanda would often sit with a pencil or something and try to make it come to her hand, by sitting there and concentrating on it, trying to will it to her, almost talking to it through her mind, coaxing it to move towards her, to come to her and roll over the table, but it had never worked, not yet.
As she wandered through the corridors of her mind, Amanda was still slouched in her chair and absent mindedly played with a pencil in her right hand which rested on the arm of the chair. As she drifted back to her surroundings she suddenly noticed the Pencil was hovering in the air over her hand and spinning on the spot, her fingers moving in time with the spinning.
She watched it, mesmerised by it as the wooden implement spun like a helicopter rotor above her hand. She didn’t want to think anything, she just watched it and blanked out her mind and stopped any thoughts that might appear there. She watched in fascination at this bizarre event. This must have gone on for a few seconds before suddenly she noticed her finger had stopped moving under it, and she panicked a little, thinking no, don’t stop, to herself.
Which is exactly what it did, and it dropped to the floor after hitting her hand. For a moment, Amanda just sat still, staring at the spot the pencil had been spinning in, transfixed as if hypnotised by the experience she had just been through. She had actually seen it happen right before her eyes, the impossible had just taken place right there and then, and she had no idea how it had happened.
She hadn’t been thinking about making a pencil float that’s for sure, and for a few seconds, while her mind was empty, it had stayed spinning, silently, two inches above her hand.
She took her feet from the table and picked up the pencil, it appeared normal, nothing special about it at all. And yet it had been spinning, floating, doing the impossible, and somehow, she’d been the cause.
She felt a little freaked out by this now and placed the pencil back on the table and looked at the clock on the mantle. The time had come for her to head out to the clearing and started her lesson with Gentle Water anyway, so she pulled on her flip flops and headed out to the clearing through the wood, feeling much happier to be away from the pencil.
The cottage had felt cool inside, but the outside air was warm and humid, the sun climbing and the sky a gorgeous azure blue.
During these hot summer days with no one around but Gentle Water, she often wore little more than one of her Bikini tops or a strappy top with some shorts or mini skirt. When she trained, such as today, she tended to wear a black Lycra sports bra and a pair of fitness training shorts. Gentle Water stuck to his oriental style loose clothing, although on the hotter days he would take his top off.
Amanda imagined that he looked like what Bruce Lee might have looked like if he had made it to fifty in good health and fitness. Gentle Water looked toned and clearly very fit himself, despite being over twice Amanda’s age.
All their training sessions were done bare foot, something Amanda had found weird at first but soon learnt to prefer. There had been the odd time she had stood on something with prickly thorns, but over all she much preferred it now.
The open ground to the tree line was warm and the sun beat down on her shoulders making them shine until she reached the shelter of the woods and proceeded up the hill towards the waiting clearing.
All the way up there, the sight of that spinning pencil remained fixed in her mind, and she wondered if she could do it again sometime. It had been a hell of a trick.
Over the past few weeks, there had been times when Amanda had thought she might mention her concerns about the things she saw to Gentle Water. He seemed interested in all things mystical and maybe he might try to help her with it. She wasn’t sure what he would do, as it was all a bit strange really. She wasn’t even sure if she could explain it to him, or where she would even begin.
There had been a few times when she had seen something or something had moved and Gentle Water had been in the room when it had happened. He never saw it, as far as she knew, and she had very nearly brought it to his attention, but had pulled back at the last instant.
She felt scared about what he might think, scared of his reaction in case he mocked her or blamed her imagination. Maybe he might even laugh at her, she wasn’t sure and she didn’t want that to happen. She had just met him after all, if she went to him and told him she’d been seeing things and could make things move with her mind, although not when she wanted it to happen, he might think he’d moved in with some sort of mad woman and run for the hills. After just having made a friend out of him, she really didn’t want that to happen.
So she had kept it to herself, hoping someday that he might see it or the conversation might get onto that sort of topic and the moment seemed right to mention it. Whatever it might be that made her finally tell him, she wanted it to happen before too long. It had started to bug her a little bit and now she had made a pencil float, and seen it clearly for a good few seconds, she once again thought over the pros and cons of telling him as she moved through the trees.
Magi Saga 1: Epic Calling Page 11