by S D Wasley
“Oh, God,” Helen breathed. “I knew him. Joshua Muir.” Cain nodded at her.
Owen wore a pensive frown. “But that was different. In Joshua’s case, we didn’t approach him during, or even close to, the time of the event. That’s what we did wrong. We intervened too early. Today, Léon intervened in the same timeframe as the event Liz foresaw. It was within minutes of the event, not days or weeks.”
“And the bus woman?” Jude asked.
Owen took a moment to recollect. “Oh. Yeah.”
No one explained the bus woman story. They were too busy trying to make their cases.
“You’re making up theories as you go along,” Cain told Owen. “There are rules. Joshua’s case taught us the rules. I don’t mess with them because it means we could fail the person we’re trying to protect.” He stared Owen down. “This isn’t like you, Owen. You’re usually the voice of reason.”
Owen bristled. “All I’m saying is we should take what happened today as instructional. We can learn from Léon’s actions. What he said could make a real difference to those kids’ lives. I mean, we could have stopped the boy from getting hurt, but Léon might have stopped them from heading down the track of petty crime the older boy’s already started on.”
Cain shook his head. “Are we here to prevent kids from embarking on lives of petty crime? Or are we here to save a kid from getting knocked over and ending up with brain damage?”
Owen’s voice rose. “If we can save kids from a life of crime then that’s something worth doing.”
“For God’s sake, Owen,” Cain snapped. “Stop with this weird idea of what we’re supposed to do. We’re not moral guardians. We get glimpses of moments we can prevent. Not insights into entire life pathways and choices. We’re not time travellers, or gods, or whatever.”
“I’m just saying, maybe we don’t have to wait for the critical moment, like you thought. It could be that we can get close to the critical moment without it coming down to the last few seconds. Reduce the risk for everyone involved.”
It was something like a face-off. Cain looked utterly unconvinced and I suspected he was about to say as much when Léon spoke.
“I do not have all the answers,” he said. “Please. I’m so new to the rescuing, whereas Cain has great experience. You should be guided by him. I was merely acting on instinct today.” Owen remained equivocal but Nadine wore a stubborn expression.
“Well, it was a damn fine instinct,” she declared and even Helen gave an enthusiastic nod.
I watched Cain covertly as Jude broke out the beer and wine and the conversation turned to celebration. He still looked perturbed, although he tried to conceal it. I sipped my wine, not so much celebrating as decompressing. For me, the rescues were always a relief rather than an achievement. And I didn’t like seeing Cain hurt by the argument with Owen―or Nadine’s wavering allegiance.
Chapter 8: Impetum
We reconvened on Monday evening, a little more subdued after a night of revelling in our success. To my relief, the tense undercurrent had eased overnight.
“Helen, tell us what you saw today,” Liz prompted, opening the ledger.
Helen described a man in a fluorescent work vest buying a carton of iced coffee at a gas station, the driveway empty in the glare of streetlights.
“Could be a truck driver,” Jude offered. “Helen and Liz have been seeing visions of trucks in and out of town with the tannery development.”
While they speculated, a peculiar feeling came over me. Something stirred just beyond the realm of my hearing and vision: movement and voices again. The hairs on my neck prickled as I looked around.
“Can you hear that?” I asked, interrupting Helen.
They all turned their eyes onto me.
“Did you hear the voices again?” Cain asked.
I blushed and regretted speaking. “Uh, yeah. That makes me sound kind of crazy but I did.”
“You’ve heard voices?” Nadine said, her voice sharp. “In here?”
“Yeah. Have you?” I gazed at her hopefully. I could still hear the murmuring, but Nadine shook her head.
“Be quiet everyone,” Owen said.
We all fell silent but when I listened harder the sound eluded me. I thought about suggesting we go check out that little chamber Patrick and I had discovered to see if we could hear the voices in there but Liz was already getting her pen ready to record Helen’s visions again. Cain gave me a helpless shrug. I got it: the only evidence of anything unusual was what the normal said. And they were busy trying to save people. If anyone went exploring the dim corridors it would be me, by myself. My courage failed me and I tried to focus on Helen’s words.
It was a much earlier night. As we exchanged our goodbyes above ground, Léon touched my arm.
“Have you checked your email today?” he asked under the general chatter.
“No. Why?”
“I’ve sent you the details I wanted you to consider. From the premonitions.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay. I’ll take a look.”
“Thank you.”
He paused, giving me a look filled with indecipherable meaning before going after Owen to the van. I lowered myself onto a crumbling section of wall as everyone departed. Cain looked at me.
“Do you need to leave?”
“I don’t want to leave you. Not like this.”
“I’m fine.”
I joined him where he stood, hands jammed into his jeans pockets. He stared up at the night sky.
“Yesterday was strange,” I said. “I don’t trust what happened.”
“I think they’ll be okay. I know I said a lot of stuff, but Owen, Léon, they’re right. Those kids will probably be okay and maybe they won’t end up getting into trouble with the law, either.”
I came closer and put my arms around his waist. The late night chill faded. “I hope so.”
“He’s wise.” Cain clearly meant Léon and he still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Wiser than me, I think.” I shook my head. “It’s like he fits better.”
“What?” I said. “No. No way.”
Finally he brought those dark eyes to my face. Cain looked uncertain. He was hurt, I realised, by Owen and Nadine’s vacillating loyalty. My love for him rushed up through my body and I kissed him fiercely, pushing myself close as though I could somehow take some of his pain away by absorbing it. He gripped me tight and sank into the kiss.
“I love you so much,” I breathed when he pulled away to look at me, his eyes drinking in every detail of my face in that way only he knew how to do.
“I fucking love you. More than anything or anyone I’ve ever known. I just―” He stopped.
I frowned, scared suddenly. “You just what?”
His gaze fell. “I’m not convinced I deserve you.”
“What the hell?” I demanded. I brought my hand up to his cheek, forcing him to turn his face back to me. “What are you talking about?”
He contemplated me for a minute. “I need to tell you some stuff. Can you stay?”
There was no way I was leaving after hearing that.
****
Late at night―in the early hours of the morning, in fact―I lay in my bed at the Old House and thought over Cain’s confession. Plainly, that was how he’d thought of it―as coming clean rather than simply telling me his story. It was as though he couldn’t go a minute longer without telling me. Perhaps seeing cracks in his group’s loyalty in the past twenty-four hours had pushed him to check whether he could be sure of mine.
“When I was younger, maybe from the time I was about fourteen, I was a total pain in the ass,” he’d commenced. “My mother died of cancer when I was a kid of ten. I had an older sister, Alannah, and my dad. My sister tried her best for me. I don’t know for sure but I suspect Mum asked her to keep an eye on me before she died. Maybe Mum knew what a little shit I was and how my dad would fail us. He was useless. Even before she died he wasn’t much of a parent. He worked at a pub so he was never home in the eve
nings, but then he’d stay on to drink afterwards most nights anyway. It was the perfect situation for a kid to get into trouble, I guess, so I went for it. There were a couple of guys, twins, who lived in our street. Garth and Jake. They were into BMX at first, and then trailbikes. They had a spare bike, a complete piece of crap but it ran, and they’d let me use it. We’d cut up the trails out the back of the reservoir together.
“Alannah didn’t like it but she figured while I was dirt biking with kids on our street I wasn’t getting into any real trouble. She worked so hard. She studied, had a part time job at the local takeout, and cooked for us because Dad was out nights. She even did our laundry and made my lunch for school every day. She was amazing. I should have appreciated her more.
“Trouble was, Garth and Jake moved in a rough crowd, especially as we got older. Drinking, weed, night racing on dead stretches of road. I was looking to find some trouble. I don’t know, there’s something about your mum dying that leaves you looking for an excuse to hate stuff. Break things; hurt people. Maybe that’s just an excuse. All I know is I was pissed at the world and didn’t care enough about anything to be afraid of getting hurt. I played harder than either of the twins. They were just a couple of goofy dumbasses who enjoyed a good time. I wanted to punish ... my mother, I suppose. Or maybe Dad. I don’t know. I tried everything I could get my hands on. I raced harder and pushed further than anyone else. I was the scene psycho who would end up with a smashed up arm or bleeding face, in the lockup after getting into a fight, or in emergency from another overdose.
“It was unforgivable, the way I acted. I hurt Alannah so badly. All she ever wanted was to do what Mum asked her to do, to look after me. I wouldn’t let her. For Dad, I was a self-fulfilling prophecy. For my friends, I was free entertainment. What would Cain do next? What new trick would the crazy performing monkey show us? When I got out of school I left the area for a year or so. I went and worked on an abalone boat. It was good money and I shot all of it into my veins. I didn’t even use the trendy modern drugs. I went old-school, like I thought I was some kind of rock star, immersed in this … this haze of heroin and self-pity.
“It took a long time but I eventually stopped. I had a scare on the boat. One of the divers encountered a shark down on a dive and panicked. He came back to the surface faster than he should have and got the bends. He got really sick, really fast. His vitals dropped and we ended up having to give him CPR. He survived,” Cain added, seeing my face. “But it scared the hell out of me. Weird―all those times I’d nearly killed myself on bikes or with drugs and it was some guy I didn’t even know very well almost dying that put my feet back on the ground. Maybe it was my age, too. I was twenty by then. I guess I might have finally been maturing. Better late than never. I decided to go home and try to get clean but Alannah was in hospital when I got back. The same cancer Mum had, only twenty years earlier. She died within months. If I wasn’t already cured of living like life meant nothing that got me there.”
At that point Cain looked deeply into my eyes, which had spilled over with tears more than once during his story. “I do not, absolutely not, want you to feel sorry for me, Francesca. I made incredibly shitty choices. I had a strong, good person in my family looking out for me and I might as well have scraped my boots on her face. I will never forgive myself for what I did to Alannah. I’m fully aware it was a choice. I didn’t have to do it, but I did.” He regarded me with an expression I couldn’t decode. “I just need you to know the truth about me in case you find out from somewhere else. I didn’t want you to know what a jerk I was, but I need you to.”
“I don’t think you were a jerk. Just a messed up kid.”
“Seriously, don’t. There’s nothing that can undo what I did to my sister.” He was still watching me with that look on his face. Like he thought I should shout at him or show disgust.
“Uh, I don’t mean to disappoint you but I still love you,” I told him.
He stared for a moment, and then laughed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I can see you gearing up for something. Some kind of rejection. I’m not going to give it to you.” Cain tightened his jaw and stared at the stone floor. “What did you think I would say?”
He gave a helpless twitch of his shoulders. “Nothing. I don’t know. I thought it might change the way you saw me.” He took an uneven breath but his voice was steady when he spoke. “I didn’t think you would leave me, I guess, although I would understand if you did.”
“I don’t want to leave. I want you,” I said, the stubborn tone coming through more plainly than I’d intended.
His face relaxed into a smile and he scooped me in for one of his crushing hugs. That was better. That I understood. But then he made love to me so gently, so reverently, I almost cried again. His hands and lips traversed me like he was on a holy journey. He wouldn’t let me touch him. In fact, he seemed to gain more pleasure from his attentions to my body than anything else. It was a terrible, marvellous torture. Sometimes, when I thought there was no way I could feel any more for him than I already did, he took my love up to yet another level.
****
The late night confession at the chamber under Gaunt House drove out all thoughts of Léon’s request to analyse his group’s Christmas visions. I didn’t even think of it again until I checked my email after college the next day. Léon’s message was long and involved, as though he’d saved a draft and added to it as he recollected different things at different times. He’d also forwarded an email from a member of his group, Sara, the girl he’d mentioned, the only one he still had regular contact with. I read Léon’s message first.
Dear Francesca,
I am certain there are more details, but these are the ones I recall. Every moment I am angrier with myself that we never recorded our visions as your group does. But I will write the premonitions as faithfully as possible and I hope you can detect some pattern or meaning. Sara has very kindly written down her own and I shall send on the message from her. However, I still cannot reach Tania or Yousef so instead I have described what I recollect of their premonitions here.
The singing of carols by a large group. Not professional. This is almost certainly in a church. A choir of churchgoers. A baby is crying during the singing and there is a cough or two to be heard.
The crackling of flames and tremendous heat of a large fire very close by. Screaming and shouting. A boy calling for his papa.
A man on the phone, panting in great distress, requesting help. He gasps because he hears a great shattering of glass and the sound of rainfall. He says: ‘It is spreading through the village.’
The sound of a quiet kitchen, someone preparing food. Spice bursting in oil and chopping. A feeling of quiet homeliness. A sense that the woman is cooking while the children are at school, and there is an old man or woman also living in the home. It is very quiet. Then loud noises commence from outside in the street. Shouting and a scream. The woman stops chopping.
Sirens amongst the screaming. The roaring of a storm or great wind.
Francesca, you do not know how important it is to me that you have agreed to use your incredible gift to help understand these pieces of information. I feel so lost and helpless without the rest of my group members. Thank you for helping to prevent a terrible event.
Sincerely, Léon.
I sensed the desperation in his words and my heart went out to him. I replied to ask a question: what sort of sirens? Ambulance, police and fire services all used different kinds. Knowing it was definitely fire engine sirens they heard might help establish whether or not this vision was related to the same event―the fire at the church. Then I turned to the other email, the one he’d forwarded from Sara. There were no message details, email address or time sent. Léon must have removed all of that when he sent the message to me. I wondered briefly if he could be trying to protect his group from access to me, or to Cain’s group. I wouldn’t blame him after seeing the impact he’d had on our group. Cain p
robably wished he’d been more cautious about exposing us to Léon’s influence.
Dear Léon, these are my recent premonitions as you requested.
I feel a warm wind but no sunlight on my skin, so I think I’m in shadow, or it’s a summer evening. There are no people around. I hear the birds and the breeze through the grasses. I smell an earthy, dusty scent of harvest. I hear a lorry approaching and it sounds laden with goods. It passes me with a rush in the still air.
I am in a hospital. There are nurses and doctors rushing around me. They are shouting at each other and I hear one say, ‘Call the Health Department, we need help!’
A vehicle driving along a rough trail, crackling leaves and branches. A bad smell like rotten fish or dead animals. The vehicle stops suddenly and a man gasps. The door opens and he gives a curse.
Busy sounds of a home with children. The mama and papa mutter together about the sickness of their son. She says, ‘He has been vomiting all day, I think we need to see doctor, I feel sick, too.’ The papa says, ‘I will check him.’ Then after a moment he calls out, ‘Lydia, Lydia, there is blood in the vomit, we must take him to hospital!’
A beeping sound. There is a breeze and that bad smell again.
I am in a cold place. I hear the sound of rumbling, over and over, like a filing cabinet being opened and closed. There are quiet voices and the sound of a pen scratching on paper.
She had signed her name Sara at the end. I reread the list of descriptions, hesitating on the final one. A shudder went through me. I knew exactly what it meant and it made me feel ill. I had to speak to Léon immediately. No, I had to speak to Cain. Dammit, who should I speak to? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that this was serious and I was frightened. With trembling fingers I opened a message to Cain.
Freaking out over something Léon’s group saw. Will tell you about it as soon as I get there.