by Tony Butler
Shaun nodded in agreement. “That must be it,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d have come across her before. Someone who can do what she can would be front page news, but what about her healing power?”
“I’ve been thinking about that myself. I’m wondering if these incidents are the first time she’s had to reveal herself. Perhaps she’s been deliberately keeping a low profile until now.”
“She’ll wish she had stuck to that policy if ever the press find out about her,” Shaun said. “She’ll be besieged with people begging her to cure them.”
“I’ll get on to it, though I’d love to know who she is.”
* * * *
Mary lay with her head resting on Carl’s shoulder and her arms wrapped around his naked torso. He was asleep and she remembered the feel of his body rubbing with increasing urgency against hers with only the thin sheet separating them.
“I’m coming!” he’d cried and she’d held him tightly to her as his entire body stiffened and twitched on top of her. Then he’d let out a deep sigh, kissed her, then rolled off her and fell asleep. She examined the silver ring on her finger, a reminder of her vow to remain a virgin until she married. Carl had respected her for that and had shown her that there were alternatives to penetrative sex. She’d learned a lot about him and a lot about herself, too, over the past couple of hours. She was growing up.
Mary looked at her watch. It was only nine-thirty and she decided to make them both a coffee. Slipping out from underneath him, she eased herself out of bed and put on her bra, studying the love bites that Carl had left on her breasts. She’d have to make sure she kept herself covered up for the next few days until they faded.
She put her coat over her underclothes and, leaving Carl’s bedroom, made her way downstairs towards the kitchen. The living room door was ajar and Julie and Alex were sitting on the sofa drinking from cans of lager and watching the news. Mary slipped past the room without being noticed and, once in the kitchen, busied herself making the drink.
A few minutes later, carrying a mug of coffee in each hand, Mary walked past the open living room door.
“Bloody Hell!”
Stepping into the doorway, she saw Alex and Julie staring at the TV. A local news bulletin was on.
“…and Bill Harris is outside the hospital now,” the newscaster said. The scene changed from the studio and Mary recognised Conway’s General Hospital.
Bill Harris, the reporter, stood with his back to the main entrance. “According to a hospital spokesman, the man was covered in exactly the same kind of mysterious blue light as the girl who was admitted on Friday and, just like the girl, the man who has fallen through a shop window is making an almost miraculous recovery.”
“Do they know who or what is responsible for the phenomenon, Bill?”
“Yes. According to eyewitnesses the blue light shot out of the hands of a young woman who went to help the man, but she disappeared before the police and ambulance arrived. They say that the girl was with a young man who was set upon by a group of young men, including the one in hospital, and…”
Mary listened to the rest of the report in stunned disbelief. “On no, Jay,” she cried. “Not again!”
“Jay? Is it Jay Williams they’re talking about?” Alex leapt up off the settee and grabbed Mary’s wrist before she realised she must have spoken aloud.
She shook her head. “Of course not. Don’t be stupid.”
“Stupid, am I?” He twisted her wrist hard and Mary cried out in pain as the hot coffee poured out of the upturned mug and over her bare legs. Alex took the second steaming mug out of her other hand and held it over her head. “Are you going to tell me the truth or do you want a coffee shampoo?” He
tipped the mug slightly, causing a small stream of the scalding liquid to fall onto her head and she screamed in pain.
“Last chance, Mary,” he said.
“No,” she cried. “Okay, you’re right, it was Jay.”
He grinned at her in triumph, released her wrist and handed her the mug of coffee. “Oh, what a shame you seemed to have spilled the other one,” he said. “Now, get lost. I’ve got things to do.”
* * * *
Carl found Mary crying in the kitchen and holding a cold compress to her scalp. When she told him what had happened he erupted, rushed out of the kitchen and into the lounge. She went after him in time to see Alex being slammed against the wall. Mary, who had never seen Alex looking scared before, didn’t blame him for looking terrified now, because Carl had him pinned against the wall by his throat. Carl’s other hand was fisted and he drew his arm back, preparing to smash his fist into Alex’s face.
“No, Carl!” Mary rushed over and grabbed his arm. “He’s not worth getting into trouble over.”
She could feel his trembling rage, but then he looked at her, nodded, lowered his fist and removed the hand that had been clamped around Alex’s throat.
“You’re right, he’s bloody well not. But I’m warning you,” he growled at the ashen faced Alex.
“If you ever touch Mary again, I’ll feed your bollocks to my dog.”
Alex gave a sickly smile and massaged his neck. “Look, mate, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t realise that you and Mary had become an item. But I’m still going to split the two hundred pounds, fifty-fifty with you.”
“What two hund—?”
“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you about it, mate,” Alex said. “You know that blue light that Sophie was covered in? Well, it was Jay Williams who did it—healed her I mean. She did it again tonight to a bloke who fell through a shop window. It was on the news on telly.”
“That’s why he split the coffee on me,” Mary said. “I was with Jay when she healed Sophie. It knocked Jay about really badly and she couldn’t remember anything about it, and was terrified in case it ever happened again. When I saw the news on TV, Alex heard me say, ‘Oh, Jay, not again,’ and—well—you know the rest.”
Alex shrugged. “Of course, I wouldn’t have hurt Mary, if I’d have known…”
“You’ve already done that bit,” Carl said. “Now, tell us about the money.”
“Well, that’s why I needed to make sure that it was Williams,” Alex said. “No one knew who Williams was because the security camera film was so bad. So I phoned up the TV News desk and asked for the editor. Told him straight, I did. It would cost them two hundred quid for her name and address. I should have asked for five, because he bit my arm off so fast…”
God, he’d told them who Jay was! The BASTARD! Mary, the shy, quiet girl from chapel, had heard of righteous anger. But it was more of a righteous fury, like a stream of molten metal flowing down one of the cast-iron channels in the foundry where her father worked that fuelled her punch. It connected with Alex’s nose with a solid, satisfying crunch that hurt her knuckles and sent him reeling backwards, spraying blood.
He yelped and clamped a hand over his injury. “Oo’ve dwoke me duckin dose, ooh ditch!” he cried in shock.
“I’ll break your fucking neck, you—you bastard!” Mary launched herself at Alex, wanting to smash him into a bloody pulp. Carl’s arm hooked around her waist and swept her gently off her feet, swinging her around him in an arc.
“You’d better get out of here while you still can, Alex,” Carl chuckled. “And take Julie with you. Go on, get out of here.”
Without waiting for Alex’s response, Carl ushered Mary into the kitchen and over to the sink. He turned on the cold tap and held her right hand in the flow of the water. “Hold your hand under there while I make a cold compress. Otherwise, your knuckles are going to be badly bruised in a few minutes. Let’s hope you didn’t break any fingers busting Alex’s nose.”
“It would be worth it,” Mary muttered, as Carl placed a neatly rolled up napkin under the cold water. “I’ll have to ring Jay in a minute and warn her.”
Chapter Six
Twenty-seven years earlier. England 1985
Seven-year-old Adam lay on his back in the darknes
s of the room that he shared with eight-year old Ben, and Eve who was also eight. Something had awakened him, but he wasn’t sure what. So he listened and waited while he tried to work out what it was that had drawn him out of his dream.
“Hey, Adam, are you awake?”
He looked to his left and saw that Eve was sitting up in her bed looking at him.
“Yes, something woke me up,” he whispered back, because Janine, their keeper, would be cross if their talking woke her up. She slept in a small room just outside the locked door of their room, the key of which was fastened to her belt.
“Me, too,” Eve said in a whisper. “And Ben.”
“We thought you were still asleep,” Ben hissed from Adam’s right. His bed creaked slightly and then he padded over to Adam’s bed and sat down on the end. “I thought I heard someone calling me from inside my head.”
“That’s what it sounded like to me, too,” Eve said. “What about you, Adam?”
“I can’t remember, but how can anyone call you from inside your head? And anyway, we don’t know anyone except Janine, the doctor and those men who come to see us sometimes, and they haven’t been to see us for ages.”
“Not since the doctor finished giving us those injections a couple of years ago,” Ben agreed.
“That’s when he told us that there wouldn’t be anymore, because his experiments hadn’t worked.”
“I hated it when he used to cut bits off us with his knife to see if we bled or could re-grow the missing bits,” Eve said. “It was stupid and used to hurt like shit!”
“Eve!” Adam didn’t like to hear her swearing.
But Eve wasn’t listening. She was staring open mouthed at the barred window and so was Ben. Lights danced over the window. Hundreds of tiny spheres of brilliant red, green, blue, white and yellow light swirled and spiralled across the window. Adam thought they were amazing and even when they stopped dancing and formed themselves into words, he couldn’t stop smiling. The lights made him feel good.
HELLO ADAM-BEN-EVE, the lights spelt out and then swirled around to spell out more words. COME OUTSIDE. WE’RE WAITING.
“We can’t,” Eve said. “We’re locked in.”
CLOSE YOUR EYES AND WE WILL OPEN THE WINDOW.
Adam looked at the others and they both grinned at him and screwed their eyes shut, so he did the same. Even with his eyes shut, he could see the lights glowing far brighter than before, so bright that it almost hurt. Then they dimmed and, when he opened his eyes, he saw that the iron bars on their window had melted. He felt the night air blowing through the window. The glass had gone too. The lights were about three feet away and Adam stared in surprise at the figures standing smiling at him. There were seven of them and they were all wearing strange one-piece suits that looked as though they were made of some kind of thin metallic material. Each of the visitors’ suits was a different colour to his companions, and the one wearing red had the red lights swirling around him, and the blue lights danced around the figure in blue, and so on. They all wore long silver coloured boots but didn’t seem to be wearing space helmets or anything.
“Hello, Adam,” a voice spoke inside his head, but somehow he knew it was the figure in green who had spoken. It was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman because of the suits and their hair was closely cropped, but they were all about the same size as an average grown-up. Except for the fact that their foreheads seemed slightly bigger than normal and the suits they wore, they looked like normal people. Adam knew, though, they were aliens from another planet, the one he’d visited in his dreams. These aliens, unlike most of those on TV, were old friends and didn’t mean him, Ben or Eve any harm.
“Come,” the voice said. “We have much to do and very little time.”
Adam glanced at Eve and Ben and then climbed out of the window and stood barefoot in the grass.
“No! The night is too cool.” It was the one in red who spoke this time. “Go back and put on your clothes, Adam. Tell Eve and Ben to get clothed too, but hurry.”
Eve was already halfway through the window, but Adam pushed her back inside. “They say we need to get dressed first,” he said.
They changed their nightclothes for the red plaid shirts, jeans and trainers and Adam led them back through the window and over to the waiting figures.
“Come,” the man in blue said. He and the others seemed to float across the grass and Adam, Ben and Eve had to jog behind them to keep up.
“Where do you think they’re from, Adam, Mars?” Ben asked.
“No, we come from a world much further away than that,” the yellow suited man’s voice said.
“We have been searching a long time for you, Adam, Ben and Eve.”
They stopped at the edge of the ‘U’ shaped marshes that were half a mile wide and ran north for eighteen miles before they started to curve in a seven-mile arc. Then they ran back parallel to the first eighteen-mile stretch. The doctor had explained that a freak seam of coal that had been mined in the nineteenth century caused its shape. The coal had been excavated to a depth of sixty foot, when the miners breached an underground stream that had flooded the workings. Later, they had tried to fill in the mine with rubble, earth and sand and created the marshes.
The men stared at the marshes as though looking for something, then Adam noticed that the surface of the marsh was beginning to glow a luminous green, and it was growing brighter.
“Look!” Eve said and Adam saw a gigantic mushroom shape rising up out of the marsh. It seemed to be spinning and to be covered in coloured lights. It rose high above their heads to reveal a huge can-shaped core that glowed white. Two curved panels at the front slid apart in opposite directions and a flat beam of silver light about three foot wide shot across the surface of the marsh towards them.
“It’s a flying saucer,” Ben said. “A real flying saucer.”
The beam spanned the surface and the men started moving across it.
“Come, children,” the man in red said, into Adam’s head. “Keep in the centre of the beam and you will be safe.”
Ben tentatively put one foot onto the silver path and then the other. “It feels solid,” he said, and started following the men. Eve was next and Adam followed behind. It was just like walking on the floor, he thought.
They went into the cylinder section, which was bigger than their room and about ten times as high as their ceiling. The silver path retracted and when it blinked off the curved doors of the cylinder slid shut behind them.
There was a faint humming sound in Adam’s ears and he became aware that they were travelling upwards. With a barely audible click they stopped, another smaller door slid open and he followed the others through it.
The three of them stopped and stared in disbelief, for above, in front and below them, stretching into the distance as far as he could see were millions—no trillions—of stars. It was as though the flying saucer had become transparent and they were standing on nothing.
“That is your home on your right,” the man in green said, pointing with a long slender finger.
“The planet that you call Earth.”
Adam saw the blue tinged planet that looked no bigger than an orange and was suddenly afraid. What was going to happen to them?
“Fear not, Adam,” The man in red said. “Once we have rectified the damage that your scientists have inflicted upon you, we will take you all back again.”
Suddenly, the ship was solid again and the stars were only visible from small oval shaped windows spaced evenly around the spacecraft. The nearest one was about a hundred yards away. The men removed their suits and beneath them they were wearing some sort of uniforms consisting of a tunic top and trousers that were made of white material and trimmed in silver. The man who’d been wearing green turned out to be a woman and so did the one who’d been wearing yellow.
“I am Hiljah, the guardian of the red. I command this ship and am the leader of this expedition,”
the man who’d worn the red suit said, spe
aking aloud for the first time. “Let me introduce my companions. Nikarra, the guardian of the green, Fijojo, the guardian of the blue and my second in
command.” Nikarra and Fijojo nodded and smiled at them. “Linitutlu is the guardian of the yellow and Girrisul the guardian of the white.”
“We have been searching for you for a long time,” Girrisul said. “Ever since Adam came to us and told us of your plight.”
“But the doctor and his friends are thinking of killing us soon,” Ben said. “Adam heard the doctor talking to Janine and the other men. Adam can do things like that—hear people talking even though they’re in another room.”
“As for the doctor killing you, we intend to tell you a way of stopping that. We also know of Adam’s gift,” Girrisul said. “Adam comes to us at night sometimes in his dreams. That is how we were able to find you.”
“You never told us, Adam,” Eve said.
“That’s because I never remember my dreams,” Adam said. “But I knew that I had met Hiljah, Girrisul and the others before.”
“Several times,” Hiljah said. “But now we must examine you before we take you home.”
They followed Hiljah and the others back into the cylinder and when the door opened again they went into a narrow corridor, then into a room that contained bright overhead lights and shiny tables. Girrisull led Eve to one of the tables and she climbed onto it and lay down on her back. Ben did the same on another and then Adam was led to a third.
“Please lay down on the platform, Adam,” Hiljah said. “We have to examine you now.”
Adam laid down, the lights glowed brighter and he heard a clicking sound. It felt as though someone was lightly flicking a fingernail against his arms and then it stopped as quickly as it had begun. The lights withdrew and he saw the man in green smiling at him. “We have repaired the genetic damage caused by the scientists and all of the physical damage too.”
Adam stared at his hand in surprise. His little finger that had been lopped off by the doctor was starting to re-grow. “That’s awesome,” he said.