by Jeremy Flagg
Eleanor reached out, her hand caressing the plump cheek. Sister Muriel saw the eyes of a haunted woman. The moment her finger brushed against the young girl, a small smile crept into the elderly woman’s face. Even Muriel admitted, holding the child brought her a sense of peace; in a newborn, so much hope and possibility remained. She wanted to ask the soothsayer if she had ever considered children.
“God bless,” she whispered.
“May he smile on us all.”
Holding tightly to the infant, Muriel reached out with her other hand, taking the letter. Eleanor seemed lost in a moment, tears beginning to collect in the corner of her eyes. She turned to leave, heading for the door.
A voice belonging to neither woman sounded in the back their minds. Angel.
June 13, 2028
The voices got louder at night.
They started as distant whispers, quiet voices speaking to her just out of hearing range. Compared to New York, the voices near Boston were few and far between. The gentleman yelling or the child crying for food almost seemed like a warm comfort. Living in downtown Boston, so close to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, granted a few hundred miles of security.
It took Vanessa almost an hour to reach the roof. Fifty-something stories rested underneath her, one of the largest buildings Bostonians ever erected. Like the others, it remained empty. At this height, the wind whipped strongly enough that she utilized her core muscles to not topple over.
She pulled the hood up over her head, offering a little protection against the coming storm. Her hands rested on her thighs, rubbing them up and down for a modicum of warmth. Somewhere out over the water, rain fell, giving a damp feeling to the air. It would only be a matter of time before she needed shelter.
She closed her eyes, leaving the impending rain behind. Her mind raced away from the skyscraper. On the ground below, two miles due west, she could almost imagine the pavement beneath her feet. Despite wanting companionship, she found the people inhabiting most of the Outlands were less than civil folk. Now the dumping ground for the U.S. prison system, the Outlands held packs of convicts released from overcrowded cells.
In the far western part of the state, a band of refugees collected, working together to survive after society cast them aside. They made a home despite the circumstances. Several times, under the stealth of night, she guided wayward convicts with a chance of redemption into their fold. She’d vanish into the night. Before they could thank her, she fled, scared what they may think if they came to know her.
These people currently encroaching on her personal space were questionable folks she hoped to avoid encountering. Each night they moved closer to the downtown area, their bravado fueled by narcotics and a false sense of security. With eyes clenched tight, she let her mind wander, moving about their campsite.
Thirty-eight years of experience allowed Vanessa to cast away her physical body. Her eyes opened and she no longer sat on top of the tallest building in Boston. The mental projection of herself stood naked just outside a ring of light cast from a series of fires in large barrels. She didn’t need to see anyone to know there were thirteen of them, ten men, three women and...
Something unusual. Somebody unusual.
She walked into the dancing light of the fires. None of them broke away from their conversation. The dirt beneath her feet didn’t budge as she drifted forward. She only appeared to be walking moving through the encampment. Everything her senses accepted as real was information gathered by the peoples whose minds she touched. Luckily, a man guarded a cop car holding the oddity, allowing her to approach.
Her naked form blinked out of existence and reappeared, hovering over the man sitting next to the vehicle. The thoughts of each pack member filtered through her mind like a dozen radio stations playing in the background. The tips of her fingers sunk into the Outlander’s skull and his thoughts grew louder.
He dozed in and out of sleep, his dreams focusing on a young lady. Vanessa entered his mind, watching the images play out like an old movie projector. As he fell asleep, the young woman in his vision ran to greet him at the door of their home. Time jumped forward, unpredictable like most dreams. The girl lay in a bloody heap on the ground. The knife in his hand consumed his thoughts.
Vanessa felt a twang of pity for the man. Yet before she exited his mind, a sense of gratification washed over his body. He took joy in reliving the moment the knife killed his girlfriend. In thirty-eight years, she had listened to the thoughts of a million people; it shouldn’t surprise her the depths to which the human psyche could fall.
With the slightest mental nudge, the man’s joy came to an end. In the dream, his dead girlfriend rose from the ground, her face twisted and warped. He lunged, stabbing her again, the weapon piercing her bloodstained blouse over and over. His sleeping body tensed as the dream took a turn for the worst.
The window in the back of the cop car had been lowered enough to let in fresh air, but not far enough for a hand to squeeze through. Inside, a man lay slumped over, his bruised face tilted forward. This one felt different from the others in the camp.
“Who are you?” she asked.
She tensed, worried he stood on the precipice of death. As the mind tried to understand its own demise, frequently it’d go silent. With the slightest effort, she could listen to the thoughts of each person in the camp. If she exerted herself, every memory and life experience would be open to her. But him, the man held prisoner in the cop car, his thoughts didn’t project.
Her hand passed through the door and she touched his shoulder. Underneath her fingers, smooth skin stretched over muscle. She pressed on until her mind encountered a barrier preventing her from touching his thoughts. She gasped, both her mental image and her physical body on the roof.
“A Child.”
Thirty-six years ago, just as she spoke her first words, the president attempted to eradicate her people and their immense powers. Now, with the rise of the Children, the government returned to their old ways. Two decades had passed since she touched the mind of another Child.
“Who’s there?” The man’s voice was raw, as if he had been yelling for too long. He lifted his head, examined the car and then peered out the window to the fires. He reached for the door and shook the handle, hoping for an easy escape. It remained locked from the outside, and pulling at the cracked window didn’t offer an exit.
Vanessa brushed her hand along his face. The calm she felt amidst the coming storm passed along her skin. He placed his hand where her phantom limb rested. With a long sigh, his shoulders eased and the tension vanished from his body. The prisoner’s frantic movements slowed and it appeared as if a moment of clarity washed over his expression.
“I know you can’t hear me, but I’m coming, Child.”
The rush of connecting to her body paled in comparison to the thumping in her chest. As her eyes opened her mind merged with her physical self. Without hesitation, she ran to the edge of the skyscraper. Muscles pumped, hurling her forward. One foot hit the ledge and with a push shattering the masonry of the roof, she soared into the open air. She might be a mentalist, but like the man in the car, she was also a Child of Nostradamus. Unlike anyone else she had ever met, she was born with the ability to read minds as well as becoming a victim of the Nostradamus Effect.
Wind tugged at the fabric of her robes, threatening to rip the garment off. Vanessa’s eyes narrowed to slits as she descended down the side of the building. For a moment, the voices faded away in the rush of air speeding past her ears. As she reached terminal velocity, the ground approached quickly. Falling through the air, she knew peace. Locked between heaven and hell, existing in this purgatory of mankind, only when she fell did her soul feel complete.
Wings. They eased out into the air, catching the wind a little at a time. Her wings changed pitch until she wasn’t falling. The angle of her descent shifted, and within seconds her fall turned into a forward glide. Still high above many of the buildings, she focused her attention to th
e task ahead. As the current whipped at the feathers of her additional limbs, she remembered a lifetime ago when she found herself in an alien body.
Nearly two decades ago, she banged on a door in the middle of the night, tears rolling down her face. She pounded with her fist, waiting for the familiar moving of latches. The last thump hit the door hard enough the hinges gave way, leaving it slightly ajar. She stepped back, examining her hand. She feared what was happening, her skin an almost dark green.
A groan sounded as a small woman used her weight to open the broken door. The woman, wearing black habit and thirty years Vanessa’s senior, wasted no time ushering the girl into the house. Clearing the threshold, her body collapsed, the world growing dark.
Hours passed and the sun had faded when she finally woke. The Sister’s hand rested on Vanessa’s forehead while her surrogate mother read scripture. Despite being an atheist, she found comfort in this routine—Sister reading to her, imparting wisdom through allegory, even as she slept.
“I had hoped you could hear me.”
Vanessa took the woman’s hand and squeezed it. While not her mother by blood, Sister Muriel had fulfilled the role for as long as she could remember. She alone carried the secret of Vanessa’s telepathic abilities, something they had worked at controlling for most of her young adult life. The nun once ran an orphanage for crippled children, and Vanessa assumed old habits died hard.
“What’s wrong, child? Why are you not at school?” The worry rolled off her.
“Something happened…” Vanessa tried to find her words. She tightened her grasp on the nun’s hand, projecting images into the older woman’s mind. Vanessa showed Sister Muriel what she had seen. In the quad at NYU, the flash in the sky, the panic of the students. The stellar event was unprecedented and to this day, nobody could explain exactly what happened. The conspiracy theorist quoted lunacy, saying it was one of Nostradamus’s predictions about the end of times.
“That’s not what has you shaking, Vanessa.”
Sister Muriel gasped as Vanessa drew her into her memories. As she stood in front of a dorm room mirror, the color of the girl’s skin faded to a sickly green. Her fingertips seemed to hold thick, pointed nails and her eyes transformed into a vibrant yellow, appearing altogether otherworldly.
Sister Muriel ran her fingers over what appeared to be normal fingers. Where her eyes said they were elegant, beautiful digits, her sensation of touch said otherwise. The nun couldn’t hide her surprised thoughts. Vanessa had learned to alter her appearance years ago, but she had always struggled with masking herself from the other senses.
“Something’s wrong, maybe I’m sick?”
The nun’s expression of disbelief froze as her jaw remained slack. With the slightest tug, Vanessa witnessed the memory. In all the years she had been under the nun’s care, never had she seen this moment in the nun’s mind. The name Eleanor Valentine was only spoken in hushed whispers, that of a criminal causing a landslide of horrible events for the United States. In a flash, Vanessa witnessed the woman entrusting Sister Muriel with her infant self. Unbelievable as it seemed, the psychic had saved her life.
“The flash,” the nun said.
“You knew? You knew this would happen?” Between the betrayal and another emotion just short of anger, Vanessa’s feelings got the best of her. Shock smacked her like a slap across the face. The closest she had to a mother saw her, truly saw her. The green skin, the yellow eyes, the clumps of missing hair—Sister Muriel never cringed.
Vanessa tried to leave, making it into the foyer near the front door. Her legs buckled. She didn’t resist as her body toppled to the side. A coatrack fell alongside her. On the cold tile floor, nestled in the arms of a mother unsure how to comfort her child, she cried. Over the course of the next hour, when her voice deserted her and her tears dried, she found herself trapped in an emotional hurricane.
Sister Muriel sat on the floor for hours, her thoughts quiet as she stroked the remaining green hair. No school. No life. No future. Vanessa thought about a test in her research methodologies class, a class she would never see again. She despised the pervert of a teacher and the constantly obscene thoughts about his teaching assistants running through his head. Right now, she wished she was suffering through his exam while he mentally undressed them.
In the last three hours, the Sister only moved to grab a thick jacket to drape over the girl. Vanessa’s thoughts shifted between comfortably numb and angry at the world. She had spent her life listening to the problems of others, even if involuntarily, and she often thought about the easy solutions to their lives. At the moment, she couldn’t see a solution, only a problem encompassing her entire being, swallowing her future.
“Eleanor stopped them from taking you that day.”
Even if Vanessa had the ability to speak, the tone made it clear Sister Muriel was not looking to converse as she retold her point of view.
“A week later, she tried to kill the president. I do not believe what happened. I can’t fathom a woman who kept you in my care would be capable of evil. To this day, I know not what motivated her. But I believe she did God’s work.”
“Sister.” Vanessa’s voice came out scratchy, almost painful. “Why would God...”
“I do not know, child,” she said honestly. “But I have no doubts Eleanor saved you. I thought her cursed because of her future telling, but God has a plan.”
“Why save me?”
Fingers pushed the hair away from her face, tucking it safely behind her ear. The delicate touch of Sister’s hand soothed her worries, pushing away the disaster of her life. Even without her abilities, she predicted the phrase Sister Muriel spoke next. “God has a plan for you.”
In Boston, soaring above the city, those words echoed in her head. The breeze pressing against her skin ceased as she flapped her wings, halting her forward momentum before landing. The pavement retained its heat, warming her feet as she walked along the road. She may have been able to glide all the way into camp, but dropping down to a site filled with thugs would not go over well. They ignored her reputation for punishing the wicked. The Angel of the Outlands did not tolerate these scourges.
The whisper of voices grew louder with each step. A symphony of chaotic thoughts, hopes, desires, and a mixture of memories became clearer as she approached the camp. Locked in the car on the other side of their makeshift fort, bound and gagged, his thoughts remained just beyond her hearing. The prospect of finding someone like her excited her.
She fell back on Sister Muriel’s teachings, not trying to screen out the thoughts of these societal discards, but she refused to meddle in them. At an early age she had discovered she could tinker inside a person’s head. Behind the ability to whisper suggestions directly into another’s mind came a frightening responsibility. Even though she could, she never intentionally imposed her will on another
Sister Muriel would claim God had given her this power, and that he also bequeathed upon her a vessel capable of greatness. Now she carried assumed the mantle, one that allowed her to protect those unlucky enough to suffer the Outlands. Unfortunately, protecting people sometimes came at a price.
“Any word?”
The slight echo from hearing voices with both telepathy and her ears had once been an annoyance. She creeped quietly along the side of a freight truck, hiding among the shadows. Scattered around the circling of cars, more people relaxed, drinking booze scrounged from hidden reserves. Fearful thoughts about the salvage crew returning late drove a heated conversation between two people.
Gripping the silver cross dangling about her neck, she recited a silent prayer. Her faith deserted her years ago. If some divine invisible being watched over her, they remained hidden, cloaked in cryptic, indecipherable signs. Yet for the first time in a decade, somebody like her waited on the other side of the light. After all the years she treated the Outlands as her own personal penance, it seemed she may have somebody to connect with. Only a handful of men separated her from a new way of
life.
After Eleanor’s intervention Sister Muriel hid her, tucked away inside the convent walls. The few other sisters in residence had been apprehensive at first, scared by Vanessa’s transformation. The women who raised her from infancy tried to accept the complexity of God’s plan. She listened as they mourned the pretty young lady she had become. They prayed furiously for her, hoping to exercise her demons. While their words were pious, they remained unaware that Vanessa partook in every thought.
“They don’t want me here,” she argued with Sister Muriel.
“They fear what they do not understand, my child. You are new and wondrous. It’s a burden, I know, but you are among the first so it is yours to bear. Teach them that your heart knows good.”
Her dismissal in a higher power didn’t weaken their belief. As they settled in for their evening prayers, kneeling in the front row of pews, she watched from the back of their small chapel. She tried not to pry, but the determination with which they prayed sounded like a thunderous roar in the back of her head. No, she might not believe, but there was a sense of security knowing these women did.
The pews only measured ten deep. Her fingers dragged along the top of the benches as she walked closer to the large cross at the front of the chapel, Jesus Christ upon it. She had a moment of hesitation, fearful they would reject her, or worse, they would find her unfit to be in the company of their savior.
She had rehearsed the motion more times than she could count. She stooped down to one knee, lowering her head while she made the sign of the cross. Their prayers wavered as they peeked through clenched eyes, at a gargoyle beseeching their God. The silver cross hanging about her neck provided comfort as she rubbed it between her thumb and pointer finger.
When faced with a million possible things to petition, she found herself praying for the women around her. She desired nothing more than to be proved wrong, and have their faith be rewarded by a divine being. As she prayed for them, they returned to their own prayers, and Vanessa felt herself swept up in the emotions of the devoted. Somewhere in their unyielding certainty of a higher being, that was where she discovered a power worth worshipping.