The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  “What’s the matter?” the new nurse asked, looking around her.

  “Don’t you see them?” Abby said in a high-pitched voice. “They came in with you.”

  The woman turned to Abby’s nurse. She lowered her head and raised her eyebrows. An expression which read, I’m glad I came.

  But Abby’s nurse seemed to stiffen with the opposite impression. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, you coming with me,” she told the newcomer in a low voice.

  “No, no, please—I think it’s more important than ever,” the older nurse said, her eyes fixed on Abby.

  “Are you okay?” her nurse asked Abby.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Abby answered. “It’s just these bright, white men standing beside her.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” her nurse said to the other through the side of her mouth. “I need to get a consult.”

  “No you don’t,” the new nurse said. “I know what this is. Now, Kathy, you’ve known me for ten years. You know that I know my job. If I only ask you one time to just trust me, this is it.”

  “I trust you, Gladys. But that trust isn’t worth losing my job over.”

  “It won’t come to that. I promise.”

  The older woman walked forward to Abby’s bedside and sat down on a visitor’s chair. “Please, Sister. Tell me what these men look like.”

  Abby paused for several reasons—not the least of which was the unfamiliar sensation of being called “sister” by an African-American woman.

  “Please, won’t you tell me?”

  Abigail narrowed her eyes and scrutinized the nurse. The woman’s tone was neither pleading nor insistent. Just very, very passionate.

  “You mean you can’t see them?” Abby asked.

  The woman turned around, stood, and remained utterly still for a long moment. Then she turned back to Abby.

  “I don’t have it as strong as I used to, see. These days I can see their glow, mostly. And if I stand real still, I can almost see the edges of their wings against a darker background. It’s like any other gift, you know. Comes and goes. It fades a little with age, and neglect. So go ahead—it sounds like you’re just awakening to it. It must be powerful with you.”

  Abby suddenly felt a strange boldness come over her. She felt compelled to stare right at the apparitions and call them out like one of those last-minute witnesses at a murder trial.

  “The one on your right is tallest, and his skin is dark—as black as coal. I say ‘his skin’ because every other part of him, his eyes, his smile, his whole countenance, his whole body even, glows so bright I find it hard to look at him straight on.”

  “Does he have wings?” the nurse asked, her voice trembling with joy.

  “Okay, that’s it,” her first nurse interrupted. “Gladys, you need to leave. Or I call security.”

  Oblivious to the interruption, Abby squinted and leaned forward. “Why, he does have wings,” she said in a breathy, amazed voice. “Although I hadn’t even noticed them before! They’re huge, and dramatic . . . so beautiful.”

  “One, two . . .” the first nurse counted at Gladys in a darkening tone.

  Nurse Gladys turned to the woman and looked downward, gathering her determination in one long, loud breath. “Kathy. Please. Two minutes.”

  “You’ve got one.”

  Gladys now seemed to search the ceiling tiles for inspiration. “Kathy, I know what you’re afraid of. I promise you that I’m going to help this poor girl, not hurt her.”

  “But you two are talking nonsense. You sound like a couple of girls fantasizing about fairies and pixie dust. Thirty seconds . . .”

  Gladys reached out and touched Kathy’s forearm, briefly, tentatively, then retreated like someone struck by an electric shock. “How many times have you and I sat in the lounge and whispered stories to each other about the mysteries of life and death we’ve seen in this place? Do you remember the elderly woman just last week, who popped up in Trauma Three after having been declared dead an hour before? Do you remember the things she said?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “And what about the blind girl who flatlined on the operating table and came back telling you the color of your hair and the number of dust bunnies on the top of the OR supply cabinet and a whole host of things she had no way of seeing?”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it’s not, Kathy. This is one of those things. It’s something I’ll be glad to tell you about someday, when we’re truly in a safe place. But you’ve got to trust me. This is something I know about very personally. It’s part of my past. Part of my family.”

  Kathy glanced about her with an exasperated look. “Okay,” she said at last. “You have five minutes. After that, I can’t protect you. Everyone knows you don’t work this floor. The other girls will be by—”

  “I know,” Gladys interrupted. “I’ll hurry.”

  She turned back to Abby, reached out and grazed her forearm tenderly. “Does this mean I’m dying?” Abby asked. “Right now, I mean? Is that why I’m seeing them? Have they come for me?”

  “Oh no, Sister,” Gladys said. “You may be in bad shape, but this right here ain’t about dying at all. I got it when I was eighteen, and my momma when she was twenty-two. Momma’s still alive, and Lord willing, I should be around a long time, if my children don’t put me in the grave themselves.”

  She leaned forward almost into Abby’s face now, and her voice refashioned into a fierce whisper.

  “You’ve been seeing the other kind too, haven’t you? The evil ones?”

  Abby nodded, unable to speak a reply.

  “How long has this been happening?”

  The young girl swallowed hard and blinked her tears away. “Just a few weeks. It started right before all this.”

  “And did it all start with a dream?”

  “Yes!” said Abby. “A dream about an—”

  “An old woman at the Temple.”

  “That’s right. How in the world. . . ?”

  The nurse’s grip on Abby’s forearm tightened. “My Suzette was right. She read your blog—along with half the sisters in town, apparently. She recognized your dream from the stories I used to tell her as a young girl. She doesn’t have the gift herself, but she remembered. And she was right on the money—you got the Sight.”

  “The what?”

  “The Sight is just a gifting from the Lord, honey. It manifests in young women every generation or so. I heard of it stretching back all the way to plantation days, in my family and two of the others in my church. It isn’t spoken of much. More of a myth these days, one of those shivers-down-your-back kind of stories that women tell each other when the men are out of earshot. Tell me something. Do you love the Lord?”

  “Well, yeah . . .”

  “No, I don’t mean some namby-pamby twice-a-year pew-warmer. I mean, are you on fire for Jesus?”

  Abby smiled at the old woman’s vivacity.

  “How do I prove that to you?”

  The older woman’s eyes fell to the bed where Abby’s hands lay still. She smiled. There, still clutched in Abby’s fingers, was her gnarled old study Bible.

  “You have to know that He’s all that’s getting me through,” Abby said in a breathy voice, on the thin edge of tears.

  The nurse reached forward and with an index finger lifted a tear from Abby’s cheek. “You don’t have to prove nothin’.” Kathy glanced over with an impatient expression, and Gladys rose to leave. “One thing. This is a strange question to ask, so you can tell me to mind my own business. But do you have any color in your family tree?”

  “What?”

  The older woman smiled indulgently. “Any African forebears?”

  Abby lifted up a blond lock of her hair. “No, not a bit. Not that I know of anyway.”

  The nurse shook her head. “It didn’t seem like it—you’re blonder than vanilla pudding. That’s the strange part, though. I’ve never heard of it coming to a white person be
fore.”

  She blew a kiss and walked out. Then her face reappeared in the doorway.

  “One last thing, I promise. Suzette would kill me if I didn’t tell you. But you’ve gotta check your e-mail. You done stirred up something big. And word is, you don’t even know it.”

  Abby felt a surge of curiosity and longing well up inside her, and called out weakly, “Come back?” But the old woman was gone.

  Reply to: Abby Sherman, BeachDreamer@MyCorner.com Message received at Server, marked UNREAD

  Whoa. Up until I read your blog, I was sure that it only happened to members of my family or my church. See, I had that same exact dream, down to the smell of animal dung and the difficulty standing up, and especially the feeling of holding that Child. Especially that part . . . Only it was three years ago.

  I started to tell my family the next morning, and my momma looked over at me from the stove with a look that told me I’d get whupped within an inch of my life if I said another word. So I made up some other ending, like some Elm Street nightmare. And an hour later, she took me aside and told me something.

  Now, I’m gonna go ahead and tell it to you. Not because what she told me wasn’t a major secret, but because you sound like someone who needs to hear this secret as badly as I did. See, she told me these dreams were like the beginning of what she called a “wondrous” thing that was going to start coming to life inside me. It almost sounded like when she had “The Talk” with me, you know, the one about getting your first period and becoming a woman and sex and all that, only that happened six years ago.

  She didn’t tell me what the next part would be, because she didn’t want to bum me out in case it didn’t happen. But she said there would be more “giftings,” as she called them. And we’d wait for them. Then she told me that if I got them, it would be proof that I had something she called, in this really deep whisper, “The Sight.”

  It was something only a few women in my family had been blessed with. My great-aunt Lavinia had it, she told me, along with a couple of old-timey great-grandsomethings I only heard about growing up. And that wasn’t any surprise, because me and Laveen, as I used to call her, were as tight as thieves all through my childhood, until she passed from a stroke one week after my ninth birthday. We had a bond, they always said. Laveen would always squeeze me to her bosom and say “Ooooh, this is a special child,” even if no one was listening. It was she who first prayed the prayer of salvation with me, and who told me about making God the delight of my heart.

  And I always knew that folks listened to Lavinia. There was just something different about the way people cocked their heads and turned their eyes when she said something important. She had respect. Don’t mean to sound like an Aretha Franklin wannabe, but I’ll bet you know what I mean when I say that.

  So now it seems like I’m still in the process of getting the Sight. And I’m not going to tell you everything that comes next.

  Except I will ask you a question, Abigail Sherman. Are you starting to see things? Spirits? Has the veil lifted yet?

  You IM me, Sister. And we’ll talk.

  Jackie at MyCorner

  THE FOUR SEASONS, NEW YORK CITY —MORNING

  His satellite phone rang with that spectral ring tone that never failed to send an unintended shiver down his spine.

  Five long, droning chimes.

  Hell calling.

  His back and neck stiffened and his eyelids fluttered the way they do when someone braces for impending impact. Like a child running full speed toward some sensitive part of his body. A door swinging into his face.

  Yet despite all his training, his ferocity of will and his commitment-to-the-death, that particular ring tone never failed to make some long-buried part of him recoil. He knew it was childish and beneath a hardened warrior of the Brotherhood, yet the sound drenched his spirit with a distinct and otherworldly chill.

  Creepy.

  And still—the sound’s gloominess paled next to the ghastliness of the caller waiting to speak with him. He knew that without a doubt.

  The world knew him as a highly successful if somewhat unapproachable investment banker. But in the only world that truly mattered to him, he was known as Elder of the Order of the Scythe, or in simplistic American parlance, Elder. He hated the simplified term. First of all, it made him sound like some éminence grise, a grizzled old septuagenarian—when in fact he was by far the youngest of all his peers among the other Elders.

  But the titles were about so much more than nicknames and semantics. They meant entrée to the world’s most hidden and secretive halls of ultimate power. A pivotal role in the innermost collusion of nations and multinational corporations. Most of all, terrifying glimpses into the true nature of good and evil, of spiritual powers ordinary people would never believe. He couldn’t remember how he had endured his existence before being shown the other side, beyond the gate. He now walked through life with his secret like a throbbing place deep inside him, a warm glow of superior knowledge. He would rather die now than go back to a barren existence most people lived— mere work, financial advancement, family travails.

  Abandoning his usual grace, he jerked his hand into the Armani pocket and yanked out the phone. As he held it up and flipped it about expertly in his grip, his gaze instinctively lingered on its heft, its thickly utilitarian design. The oversized display that read, caller ID out of area.

  Yeah, he thought with a bitter chuckle. It’s out of area, all right.

  He glanced around him at the other café diners and noticed, against a dozen well-scrubbed ears, cell-phone snobbery in full bloom. Handhelds trimmed in silver and gold and even platinum, each seemingly thinner than the next. He wondered if anyone would notice his phone’s thicker bulk and be sophisticated enough to ascribe it to the device’s global range, and not a lack of elegance.

  Stop it, he told himself. Enough petty elitism. You’re about to talk with . . .

  He couldn’t even bring himself to think it. He rarely did. Instead, he winced and flipped the phone open.

  “I’ve just received a disturbing report,” the voice said. There was no greeting, no introduction. Just that growl halfway between that of a wolf and of a Harley throbbing out of first gear. Few but he could even understand it.

  “What is it, master?”

  “The girl did indeed post, or upload, the account of her dream onto her website shortly after surviving our attempt.”

  “I believe we were anticipating that.”

  “Yes, but we weren’t anticipating this. Apparently, her narrative ended with a challenge, an open request for anyone who has ever experienced that dream to contact her.”

  “Great. It will have to be sabotaged.”

  “It’s too late for that. Listen to this: in less than twelve hours her challenge has set off an avalanche of responses over the Internet. At last report, just before I dialed you, sixty thousand individual responses had been sent to her account. Fifty-thousand-plus of these young women have signed up as Abigail’s MyCorner friends. Already, media is beginning to look into this brand-new Internet celebrity with the mystical story.”

  “I had no idea . . .”

  “Of course you didn’t. None of us knew how powerful these personal websites have become. But it cannot continue. This could spiral out of control and become a worse threat than anything we’ve ever imagined. In fact, it may already be too late.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? Then instruct our contact and kill her. Assemble the team. Now.”

  He sighed. His master never minced words, never one for euphemisms or fancy talk. Another reason for the bulky handheld, embedded with the very latest encryption technology and supposedly impervious to NSA snooping. Every month, it seemed, another box arrived by overnight carrier from some obscure Asian port, bearing the very latest secure communications unit.

  He decided to push his luck an inch further. “But she is dying, master. She has less than three months left. Isn’t that enough?”

>   “You miserable idiot! It’ll make things worse. At her rate, she’ll have half the world on their knees fondling crosses by the time she passes. She’s more dangerous than ever!”

  He paused. He had pictured this day coming, so many times. But not like this. Not now, or here.

  “I understand. I’ll assemble the team.”

  “Can you do this? Am I going to have a problem with you?”

  “No problem, master. My allegiance is absolute, as ever.”

  “It better be. Because if she starts to awaken even more, and it finds its way onto that website, it’s all over. You give the order immediately. A clean hit, disguised, untraceable. I’ll give you one week. And then if she’s still alive, you die before she does.”

  And then a click and a merciful dial tone.

  CHAPTER

  _ 7

  SCHEVENINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS, WORLD COURT DETENTION FACILITY —LATER THAT DAY

  “I want a massage.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah. My wife told me last night that you degenerates offer your prisoners massages. And I have a sore back from that pathetic flight and that van drive over here.”

  A smile formed—a slight, deliberate turning of the lips and nothing more. The lean face and dead eyes remained unaltered.

  “So, I want a massage.”

  The Dutch prison warden scowled at the man—his newest inmate, the infamous Serbian general and accused mass murderer, Radovan Mladov.

  The warden felt the spotlight of international media attention surrounding Mladov’s arrival like a physical sensation, an invisible heat lamp trained upon his body. It seemed to radiate from the dozen or so satellite trucks parked outside the walls, from his telephone ringing incessantly with calls from every news organization on earth, and from the glare of camera lights nearly blinding him and his men when the prisoner’s van had finally glided through their gates.

  Mladov’s arrest had made headlines across the planet, as had the assertion of jurisdiction by the World Court and the general’s eventual extradition here. The world was watching, clearly. And now, for just a moment, he could sense the focus of that scrutiny fixed squarely on him.