by T H Paul
Penny was hardly on the inside, but she knew what he meant. Now that Penny knew she was an Enchanti. Penny wasn’t sure if she could face Jack’s older sister, however.
“I’ll think about it. Is Lucy still local?”
“I believe so, yes. I see Lucy's father occasionally. It’s just the two of them now, of course, with Jack gone.”
How had she missed it? Penny recalled, Jack had always said how he had something in common with Penny because he’d lost his mother just as she had. Suddenly it all clicked. Lucy had been behind that. She was the reason why there was no mum around the house.
Maybe Penny should meet with Lucy after all. An Enchanti couldn’t use a gift on another Enchanti, so there was no danger to Penny from anything Lucy might try and do to her. She wouldn’t know what had happened to Jack, anyway. She couldn’t have known.
“What gift does your friend Millie carry?” The change of topic was like shoving a gear stick into reverse all of a sudden.
“Millie, how do you know about Millie?”
Thomas nodded as if having his suspicions confirmed.
“She made my radar. You spend a lot of time with her.”
“You’ve been following me?” Penny didn’t like the idea of that at all.
“Since finding you, I’ve been looking out for your best interests, Penny. That’s all.”
“How does Millie have anything to do with that?”
“It depends on what she’s gifted with, doesn’t it.” There was a threat again there, Penny knew that much.
“She has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Penny,” he said, his tone authoritarian again, like a nineteenth-century father to a wayward child. “You can’t be free from your condition while you still have any dependencies. I’ve freed you from one situation, don’t force my hand in another.”
“Millie has nothing to do with any of this! Leave her alone!”
“You promise me that you’ll undo anything you’ve gifted her with, and I’ll promise no harm will come to her.”
Penny was facing her father, the two in an awkward confrontation in the middle of the path. Neither said anything to the other, both looking into the unblinking face in front of them. Penny once again saw the fanatic people were quietly talking about as being far more dangerous than was openly known. Was she now seeing that first hand? Was there a menace to her father of which she was not fully aware? Taking out a scumbag like Clive Banks was one thing. Threatening an innocent young woman because of the chance she carried some power was an entirely different thing.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Penny said, having looked into his dark eyes and seen something only more mysterious still. He was not bluffing.
“Good, then no accident will befall your innocent little Millie,” he said, turning on the spot and heading out of the park. Penny walked the opposite way, heading home.
7
I’d undone my gift to Millie the following morning, having contemplated it all that night. She didn’t need to be able to heal me any more than she needed her life to be needlessly at threat. I was sure my father would have otherwise harmed her.
I didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t the man who had left home. I had grown to loathe him in the years since he’d gone. Now he was back, I feared him.
I knew I needed to meet up with Lucy. I needed someone other than my father to talk these personal things through with, but I would have to be careful how much I let on, at least to start. I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone, especially the older sister of a boy I’d killed.
But first I wanted to put in place another level of protection around me, for something I was thinking through. No one could know, especially my father. And I would have to pick my spot perfectly.
It was a warmer than average August, as Penny took the Jeep for a drive. She was heading to the hospital, the nearest A&E thankfully not too far from home. Penny had settled on that location for many reasons. Too far away, and the people were most likely not local. At least picking a hospital, and the emergency room at that, it guaranteed an environment of locals. Who would travel further than needed if they were in pain?
Penny also wanted to select the right type of person. Penny sensed she would know what she was looking for when she found them.
She needed someone who could not only heal her but however close to death she got, to be able to bring her back to life. Penny would even go as far as bestowing the gift of bringing her back from death. She didn’t know the extent of what her power could do. Someone, a nameless soul, who could rescue Penny. An anonymous soul Thomas would have no idea about. Someone Penny picked at random. But who?
Penny sat in the crowded waiting area for a few hours, watching people come and go. A nurse would have some training if that were who Penny should choose. A surgeon maybe even more. Penny soon focused on the medical staff themselves, instead of the patients, though realised the team might not necessarily be as local as she planned. She didn’t know, given the situation, how long she would have left to be saved; assuming she could even be helped. It was a last resort, anyway. A final chance to cheat death.
As things began to quieten down, Penny focused in on her primary target. A staff nurse who’d been running things all night was the woman Penny was going to concentrate on. Give that woman the ability to heal me of any and all illnesses and injuries, regardless of what is inflicted upon me. Give her even the ability, if possible, to bring me back to life if I die before she is able to reach me. Give her the ability to find me if I’m injured, to drop everything and locate me. Penny stopped there. She felt she had done enough.
Getting up, Penny left the A&E without otherwise getting seen to; should anyone have been watching her, they might have wondered why a young woman had been sitting waiting for the best part of four hours. None of the staff or other patients were aware, however, the hospital busy and rarely quiet.
No one, in fact, other than one man had noticed, someone who’d been following Penny since she first left her home that morning. He was walking a couple of dozen steps behind Penny, out towards the same exit doors she was now heading, when he pulled out his phone.
“Thomas, it’s me. She did it today as expected. Picked a hospital A&E.”
“Do you know who she chose?” Thomas said.
“Yes, I just saw her. She picked the staff nurse on duty. I’m sending you her details now. Do you need me to do anything else?”
“No, I’ll deal with it. Thank you, you’ve been a great help to me today.” The call ended.
Lucy was spotted wearing a bright yellow t-shirt as she walked into the cafe where Penny was waiting. The two girls recognised each other immediately. They were hardly strangers, though hadn’t seen each other for over a year, Lucy already having left college as she had been in the year above Penny.
“So we finally get to meet like this,” Lucy said, taking the seat and scanning through the menu. She needed something to eat. “You ordered?” she asked Penny before Penny had been able to voice a response.
“Not yet.”
“I’m starving. Are you getting something to eat as well?”
“No,” Penny said. She’d eaten at home and would make do with just a cup of tea, which was the cheapest drink on the menu.
The waiter came over to them both moments later, Lucy ordering a drink and something to eat, Penny a mint tea. Now it was just the two of them again, the two young women sitting in front of each other, a whole unspoken history demanding discussion now that they both knew who the other was.
“You’ve had quite a few months,” Lucy said.
“You could say that.”
“Did you ever meet up with your father?” So it appeared, at least, that Lucy wasn’t in current contact with Thomas.
“Yes, actually. I saw him yesterday. That was the third time.”
“How’s that going?” Penny couldn’t read what Lucy had meant, whether she was asking how it felt to have an estranged father in her life again, or how it was
around such a hard line fanatic.
“It’s weird in every way,” Penny opted for as a suitable response. It covered every base.
“I bet. Look, the fact I’ve been around him for a while, I hope you’re okay with that. I mean, I don’t know him, but I’ve had contact since he left you. I would see you at school and reflect that I’d spoken with your father the previous night.”
That felt strange. Penny couldn’t imagine what that would have been like for Lucy. They apparently both had things they needed to talk about.
“Do you know of any other from the collective besides me?”
“I’ve met Justin and your father, but otherwise, no. You must realise most are rather secretive.”
“My dad said you became suspicious of me after the cinema incident.”
Lucy laughed. “That was certainly odd. You were a little reckless there, I must now say. It could have caused quite an incident. But no, I wasn’t certain at the time. It could have been several people. You might have been gifted yourself by someone else. There were a dozen scenarios that might have otherwise explained it away. But I certainly had my eye on you. My hunch was that you probably were in the collective, even if you didn't know you were. I mean, I could never ask your father about it all. You had your mother at home, too.” Lucy broke off. They were stumbling into hazardous territory. Both girls took a few sips of their drinks which had thankfully arrived, neither knowing what to say next.
An hour later, the conversation was flowing nicely. Penny appreciated having someone her own age––albeit Lucy was a year older than Penny––and someone with the same gift to talk to. They’d talked about a whole range of things, comparing experiences, discussing what they could and couldn’t do. Penny had inadvertently told Lucy that she could undo gifts, though it was clear Lucy already knew. Penny pushed that to one side. Her father had suggested it was rare to discover that so young.
The one subject that hadn’t really come up, not properly anyway, was the elephant in the room. Jack. Lucy had made reference to it being just her and dad at home now, of course, several times, a little about Penny hanging out with specific people––Jack and Abbey had been mentioned. But they’d not talked about him directly, about what he’d done, or why he’d disappeared.
Penny was glad for that, coming away from the time feeling encouraged. Lucy didn’t suspect Penny of any involvement in her brother’s demise. Penny was relieved. She didn’t know if she would have been able to survive a grilling had Lucy wanted to know how much Penny actually knew. It seemed Lucy had moved on, accepting the fact she wouldn’t see Jack again, but not wanting to dwell on that anymore.
The two girls had agreed to meet again. It was a good outlet for them both. They had no other context where they could be so free. Lucy even hugged Penny goodbye as they left each other. Penny was due into the pub within an hour. She would pop home, grab another slice of toast to eat, and get ready for the evening shift. She’d had a most productive day.
8
I came away from that encounter with Lucy relieved more than anything. I’d survived. I don’t know why I thought it would have been harder than it was.
It was only that night, as I poured drink after drink during an otherwise unremarkable, and fast becoming boring, shift, that I started to go over everything we’d talked about. We had covered so much. And yet we’d not talked about Jack at all. Lucy had known we’d travelled to Margate together. I’d been at their home before we left for the station. She’d known I was the last person to see him. Yet, then, and now it seemed, she’d never mentioned that. She’d never gone as far as to ever accuse me.
It seemed odd, however, that given all she now knew me capable of, why she wasn’t searching for answers. Why was she silent? Did she know something I didn’t, therefore? Had she done something to help Jack? Had she saved him?
Penny sat at her computer that morning. Exam results were due out in exactly three weeks, though she wasn’t online to start looking at universities yet. Penny had considered it, especially after meeting her father, but now wasn’t the time. If she came through everything and if she managed to fight this thing inside her, then maybe. But Penny knew that outcome was unlikely. She would need to read up a lot more to even get the chance to understand what options, if any, she had, besides the one and only choice her mind––and by that, she presumed her parasite––was suggesting.
Penny was on her laptop as she needed to put together a new CV, not that she had much of a work history. She’d never adequately created one, besides what she’d managed to knock together briefly when she’d applied for the pub position. She already had the job at that point, it was hers to turn down. So the paperwork was just a formality, something for the file. Her prospects didn’t hang in the balance based on the impressiveness of whatever she had produced.
Now her prospects felt limited without something of magnitude being put together. Penny needed to apply for another job. Something full-time. Anything would do at the moment, though being summer, with the employment market flooded with students back from studies, she knew her chances were slim. What jobs hadn’t been taken already were probably because no one wanted to do them. Still, Penny started the process anyway, finding some useful templates after a little while and she went about constructing a new CV from there.
Two hours later, Penny had done the best she could. It wasn’t a knockout but would suffice. She saved it as a PDF onto the desktop and moved to something else. She wanted to do more research into her world, the world of Enchanti. There was a lot of forums, some asking profound questions, that Penny had never really taken too much interest in, but she sensed there were answers to be found if she was diligent enough.
Before that, however, Penny had a web browser open. She typed in the name Jack Ferguson. There were over thirty-five million results for that. None were anything to do with the boy she was thinking about at that moment. Penny narrowed the field, adding a few more words, adding the word missing. Then the Jack in question finally appeared. It was the official image the police had used when Jack had first been reported missing. His status was still down like that. It had never been altered.
Penny spent twenty minutes clicking through the various links––some took her to his still live Facebook profile, though all there was showing were the messages from friends asking where he was, wishing him well. They were all mostly old, all in the three week period after Jack first vanished. There was nothing since. It was as if he was soon forgotten, maybe his friends all assuming, rightly, that he was dead.
Penny read the messages from Jack’s dad, heartfelt, pleading words for his son to have some contact, to let them know he was at least okay. The father had written over a dozen times, by far the most of anyone. His posts were filled with comments and likes, people telling the grieving father they were praying for him, that their thoughts were with him at this terrible time. There were no comments from Abbey, Jack’s one-time girlfriend, though Penny knew precisely why that would have been the case. Most surprising of all, there were no comments from Lucy. The sister of a missing boy and she doesn’t plead. Penny typed in Lucy’s name into the box at the top of her Facebook page. It was possible––unlikely in the era they lived––that Lucy wasn’t on Facebook. However, it took little time to find Lucy’s page, which Penny scanned through. She’d been on the site for six years already and used it regularly. There was a photo on Lucy's timeline posted a few days ago.
Penny didn’t want to place too much significance on a lack of online activity by the sister of a missing boy. People deal with things in different ways, and while a lot abused Facebook with things they need not have posted, not everybody did. Penny hadn’t posted anything about the loss of her mother, for example, though Penny knew that was entirely different. What happened to her mother wasn’t anything she ever wanted people to know about.
Penny typed in the web browser search bar terms that would show Penny details of the Jack Ferguson funeral. She didn’t find any results. She s
earched the public records office, then the registry of deaths, then the listed cemeteries. Nothing came up for Jack. Finally landing on the police’s public bulletin board, Penny saw Jack’s image, the same one that had first come back in the search results, with his status still down as missing. Missing. Not dead, certainly not deceased. There had been no funeral. The family were still waiting.
Why were they waiting? What were they waiting for? Jack had seemingly vanished. They had heard nothing from him for months and months. Surely they knew he was dead now, surely they knew it was time to face reality? Did they genuinely still have hope that he would return? Penny hadn’t picked that up in Lucy. She hadn’t come across as the girl believing against all the odds. She’d barely mentioned her missing brother. It didn’t make any sense to Penny, nor did any of it sit comfortably.
Before Penny could ever think about her legacy, she needed to get to the bottom of what was going on. That might require some troubling conversations, especially with Lucy, but Penny had to know why they weren’t already grieving. Why were they not moving on? Penny couldn’t leave this planet––give up her life, if that was what she would do––not knowing everything about what Lucy might have known.
Penny parked those thoughts. She’d started to get a little depressed, a little frantic. It was probably nothing. She needed to look into something different.
Penny found the forum she was after. It had far less activity. If a part of a library, imagining the website was a physical place, could ever be the corridor at the back that nobody went to, this particular forum was such a place. Conversations were much fewer, comments and entries often weeks, or months apart, and Penny spotted a few where more than a year had passed between entries. If the Internet could get dusty, she had just found the spot.
Her father was the moderator of all the threads. That much, at least, made sense. A lot of the threads were also set to private, meaning she had to request access. She did that for a few, as the titles of these suggested it was more along the lines of what she was looking for. It figured the more risky information, the more controversial stuff, would be protected, and those who were allowed access, carefully monitored. Penny was sure her father would allow her access. She resented the fact he would know that she’d found this information, that he would know what she was looking into. Penny had no choice. She needed to research, had to understand.