A Trace of Revenge

by Lyle Howard

  3

  The University of North Florida

  Behavioral Sciences Laboratory

  Nine Years Later

  Matt Walker nonchalantly studied each of the objects before placing them down on the table before him. They were various household items that you would find in any kitchen, bathroom, or garage. There was a screwdriver, a slotted spoon, a phone charging cord, and a bottle of some corrosive smelling dandruff shampoo. He wasn’t sure that this test would prove anything. He moved them around on the desk, sorting them by size. He really didn’t know what the doctor really wanted from him. If she thought this was something he could just do on cue, she was sadly mistaken. He had no mental control over it.

  Dr. Wanda Albright sat on the other side of the partition and concentrated on the photos of the same four objects spread out before her. Although she was regarded as an authority in the paranormal study of Psychometry, the majority of the teaching staff at the college treated her like an eccentric outcast. To her fellow professors, the doctor was nothing more than a pot-smoking, sixties throwback that dealt in too much hocus-pocus and not enough perceptible science.

  Pressing each photo against the purple tie-dyed headband that she always wore, Albright tried to psychically transmit some kind of out-of-body energy across the table to the eighteen-year-old. To the untrained eye, it looked as though the old woman was in agony. In actuality, she also believed that if the boy managed to decipher one of the objects correctly, it would be a minor miracle. This test wasn’t the real reason that Matt’s grandmother had brought him to her in the first place, but she had to make sure all of the bases were covered. This was a rudimentary experiment that had to be given, and the results needed to be documented.

  Albright held up the picture of the screwdriver and focused all of her resolve upon it. Matt leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, picked up the slotted spoon and set it back down. Nothing. This whole process was really starting to get ridiculous. How long had they been at it? Two hours? Three? Trying to stifle a yawn, he watched as a black ant meandered up a nearby wall of the cramped room. Then he held up the phone cord and wrapped it around his right hand. Zilch.

  The Doctor stood up and leaned over the partition so that Matt could read her lips. “Just a few minutes more, Matt,” she promised. “Just clear your mind and relax.”

  Matt rested his head in his hands and yawned again, waiting for the small green bulb to light up. This simple light system was something they had rigged up especially for him, to signal that she had chosen another object, although he could clearly see her over the low partition. He rummaged through the four random objects before him and gripped the screwdriver to examine it. It was about six inches long with a black and red handle. Bupkis, and to think, he was missing going to a Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimps’ minor league baseball playoff game for this garbage! Albright’s hand began to shake, the photo she was holding was the screwdriver. Big freaking deal! She had a twenty-five percent chance of getting it right! What, now they had some kind of psychic connection? This was like the twentieth set of household objects she had placed before him! If someone saw all this junk, they were going to think she had robbed a Bed Bath and Beyond!

  Once again, she stood up and leaned forward over the wooden barrier. “Are you concentrating?” she mouthed.

  Matt blew out a heavy sigh of exasperation. “I’m really sorry, Wanda,” he apologized, in his deaf speech. Matt hated using his voice. He always imagined that his off-kilter cadence must have made him sound like he was choking on a prune pit.

  “So you’re not focusing on your selection?” she repeated.

  “No, not really. If you want me to, I’ll try harder this time.”

  Albright adamantly shook her head, her long gray braids flailing side to side. “No ... no, please! If you haven’t been concentrating, then please don’t try!”

  Matt scratched his short-cropped blond hair. “You don’t want me to try and trace them anymore?”

  “Tracing” was the quaint term Matt had come up with to give his temperamental ability a designation. It was his way of explaining that he “traced” the object’s history in his head. Take the screwdriver, for example; if his quirky cortex thought it was show time, he would have been able to see everywhere the tool had been, and everyone who had touched it. From the present moment back to its manufacturing, its saga would dance merrily before his eyes. But it wasn’t that simple. He had no control over when it would happen. The Lord gives it, and the Lord yanks it away.

  The doctor walked around the table, her diaphanous multicolored tie-dye chemise flowing about her. “I want you to continue to do whatever you’ve been doing, Matthew. It just seems like you perform much better when you don’t try so hard.”

  Matt’s emerald eyes twinkled at her. “Whatever you say, Doc. I just want to get this stupid test over with already!”

  Albright went back to her station and drew another picture from her tableau. The light flashed on. Matt stared at the objects before him and studied the screwdriver again. This time he really concentrated, on the plastic handle and then the metal shaft. Not today, Doc.

  The doctor disappointedly wrote down her results. Her notepad was a jumble of pen ink that only she could decipher.

  Matt was undergoing these tests at the insistence of his grandmother. Barbara Walker, now a spry seventy-one years young, sat in the next room behind a one-way pane of glass and winced every time her grandson got another card wrong. Unlike her husband Dave, she was a true believer in the mystical power that seemed to flow through her grandson’s hands.

  Years before the first incident, she had an unsettling suspicion that there was something special about Matt. Not just the usual braggadocio a grandparent rambles on about their only grandchild, but something truly unique. She regarded Matt’s power as an offering of atonement. It was as if the God Almighty was rectifying a tragic mistake. An eye for an eye, or a sense for a sense, in this case. But if there was more to it, a scientific explanation, then she had an answer for those naysayers as well.

  Barbara Walker believed that she might have been favored from birth. She had been born with a caul—a veil of skin covering her face—which, before the advent of prenatal medicine, superstition suggested meant she might be psychically gifted.

  She had always been a spiritual person, living her formative years in a strict rural community in the Midwest. But from the time of her youngest memories, she always seemed to see things clearer than the other children did. Her use of the term “clearer” was just her own rural rationalization of explaining away what she didn’t really understand.

  Like it was yesterday, she could remember the exact moment when she realized that she was different from everyone else. Barbara was seven, just about the same age Matt was when he had been attacked and left for dead. As was their usual weekly custom, the entire Davidson clan was gathered around the Sunday evening dinner table. Her father would say Grace, which was followed by the customary idle conversation covering current events and topics of family interest. But after the discussion was over, when everyone grew silent, busily filling up on her mother’s buttermilk biscuits and homemade walnut stuffing, she would continue to hear their voices! No one’s mouth was moving except to chew their food, but she swore she could listen to what they were thinking! The sounds came as plainly to her as someone whispering into her ear!

  Not everything she overheard was kind, nor was some of the language appropriate for her young ears. Some of the things she heard made no sense to her. There were words, cruel words, especially from her father, that she had never heard him use before, and she didn’t know what they meant. When she asked him about these harsh words, the old man abruptly dragged her away from the table and force-fed her an entire jar of mustard for using them in the family’s presence. That Sunday dinner was the first and last time she ever made her ability public.

  Were these voices that s
hared her mind indeed a blessing, or some cruel affliction? It took her an entire lifetime to finally come to terms with the ephemeral whispers in her head. Decade after decade of eavesdropping on other people’s intimate thoughts was enough to drive even the most rational-thinking person over the edge! She had no jurisdiction over it, even though she tried desperately to control it. It never worked when she tried to invoke it. Her ability wasn’t just mental, it was temperamental! Whenever she tried to summon it, even strained to have it perform on a cue, she would come away feeling nothing but frustration and exhaustion.

  And so, seventy-one years seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, and during this time, she taught herself to ignore the transient voices. Eventually, these whispers became merely background noise to her, much like the nagging buzz of a fluorescent light bulb. It wasn’t until she saw the same power—and so much more—in her young grandson that she sought out more information and help.

  Dr. Wanda Albright had come highly recommended. With patience and understanding, the doctor tried to explain what they were dealing with, in simple terms she thought the Walkers could understand.

  “In every human being,” Albright revealed to her, during their first meeting over lunch, “only a fraction of the brain’s potential is ever used. The brain, still being uncharted territory, has many untapped functions and perceptive abilities that we’re still unaware of. There are just too many things that occur in our daily lives that we tend to shrug off as mere coincidences. For instance,” she said while poking through her alfalfa sprout and garbanzo bean salad, “how many times have you picked up the telephone receiver, and the person you were planning on calling is on the line already? You say to them, hey, I was just about to call you. And they say, did the phone ring? I didn’t even hear it ring! Or how many times have you made a comment to someone, and they say, hey, I was just thinking that? It has happened to every one of us, at one time or another.”

  During another one of their lengthy discussions, Barbara Walker had suggested to Dr. Albright that perhaps these special abilities skip generations, like a recessive twins’ gene. Her son, Franklin was extraordinary in his own special way, but he had never showed any outward signs of being psychically gifted. Matt, on the other hand, may have always had this psychometric ability lying dormant in his brain, an ability that she had passed along to him genetically. Perhaps it was the trauma to his head that helped release it. Whatever the cause, it was obvious that her grandson possessed an extraordinary skill that couldn’t be dismissed as mere happenstance. Barbara Walker knew this beyond the shadow of a doubt because he had proven it.

  ***

  In the spring of 2012, all Matthew Walker wanted was to live his life like any typical, high-spirited sixteen-year-old boy. Seven long years had passed since the home invasion that had changed his life forever. He had moved to Jacksonville to live with his grandparents, but the pain of that night still plagued his dreams. Those haunting images manifested themselves into disciplinary problems at school, and Matt was eventually expelled from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, for what the administration described as “total disrespect of authority and disruptive behavior.”

  The idea to send Matt away to a specialized school to learn lip reading and sign language was his grandfather’s idea. In truth, David Walker was having a tough time dealing with his grandson’s inability to communicate normally. The elder Walker felt too old to learn a new way of communication ... or at least that’s what he claimed. Barbara Walker knew her husband of nearly forty-nine years much better than that. She knew the real reason her husband was shunning the boy was that he was embarrassed by him. She could tell it when they would go anywhere with Matt. David Walker would stay two paces ahead of them, unlike when the couple would go out alone, when he would stroll lovingly arm in arm with her.

  Whenever she had the opportunity, she would mention this fact to her husband, and in his usual perfunctory manner, he would deny his guilt. She knew she was right though. Whenever Matt would come home for a long weekend or semester break, the house would become as quiet and cold as a cemetery. Only one person living under the Walkers’ roof was unable to hear, but they all may as well have been deaf.

  Matt was expelled from the State School in the summer of 2011. After a year of pranks, fights, arguments, and rebellion, the school had seen enough. The straw that finally broke the Administration’s back was when they caught Matt, now only fifteen, sneaking out of the girl’s dormitory in the middle of the night. Without hesitation, they expelled him the next morning, but no matter what disciplinary action the Dean of Boys threatened the teenager with, he couldn’t wipe the contented smile off Matt’s young face.

  Barbara and David Walker were at their wits’ end with their grandson. Little did they know that the answers they sought lay less than half a mile from their home For the two weeks following the expulsion, Barbara Walker made a steady stream of phone calls, asked mountains of questions, and for all of her trouble, received an invaluable education in return.

  All roads seemed to lead to one person ... an idealistic young Principal named Carol Farmer. Farmer was the driving force behind Southside High School, a very old public school which turned out to be three blocks from the Walker’s house. A school which Barbara Walker had driven by nearly every morning for the past twenty years.

  Farmer was an enthusiastic advocate of a learning approach called “inclusion.” The intention behind the concept of inclusion was to let the Deaf student be mainstreamed into regular hearing classes with the aid of a certified interpreter. The hope for this extraordinary educating philosophy was that the deaf student would flourish in a typical learning environment, and perhaps even the hearing students who shared the classroom would gain a priceless lesson in deaf awareness. Farmer saw this program as a win-win proposition.

  Inclusion was the key that unlocked Matt’s future. Barbara Walker believed that feeling like an exile from society was the foundation of her grandson’s defiant attitude, and she was right. Within two months, Matt calmed down, his grades skyrocketed, and he began to make friends with kids who genuinely wanted to learn—not had to learn—his manual language to communicate with him. Matt had finally found acceptance, and he had also found a girlfriend.

  Simone Goodman was blossoming into a gorgeous young woman. With her dark flowing hair, expressive mocha eyes, and perpetually tan complexion, she could have easily been mistaken for a middle-eastern princess. Sadly, Simone’s mother had contracted rubella during her pregnancy—a leading cause of deafness. Simone was born into the same silent world Matt had found himself thrust into during his seventh year. Regardless of the time frame, life had issued them both a daunting challenge that each one courageously accepted.

  The same American Disabilities Act that required ramps for wheelchair access to public buildings also mandated Sign Language Interpreters be appointed for students who were academically qualified to be mainstreamed. With budget restrictions being what they were, Simone and Matt shared the same Interpreter, a perpetually grumpy woman named Iris Porter, whose gray-shocked hair made her look much older than her forty years.

  With their learning curriculums scheduled to coincide, Porter was assigned to follow the school’s only two deaf students from class to class to interpret whatever lesson was being taught. Spending nearly every learning moment together, it was no wonder Matt and Simone had become so close, so fast.

  Unfortunately, not everything at Southside High ran as smoothly as their Inclusion Program. In the waning days of the winter of 2013, there had been a mysterious rash of robberies at the school. Lockers were being broken into with no sign of forced entry. So far, nearly three thousand dollars’ worth of cash and personal belongings had been stolen from students and faculty alike. Every day before school let out, Principal Farmer would make an announcement over the public address system to remind the students not to leave anything of value in their lockers overnight. B
ut these were still teenagers, and it never ceased to amaze Farmer what her heedless students would leave behind. From video games to jewelry, wallets to backpacks, when the afternoon release bell rang, the last thing on a teen’s mind was the contents of their locker. All the students cared about was leaving the campus as quickly as their expensive sneakers would take them.

  Added security didn’t seem to be the solution either. One temporary guard was all the school’s tight budget could afford, but even a trained night watchman couldn’t be everywhere at once. There was never a sign of forced entry, so whoever was responsible must have found a secluded place inside the building to hide until they felt the coast was clear. The thieves had planned on stealth and guile, but they never anticipated what Matt Walker was about to discover.

  It was a crisp Monday morning, just chilly enough to allow the students that mingled outside the building to laugh at the visible plumes of breath that punctuated their conversations. Spring was due to begin with the next page torn off the calendar, and heavy down parkas had already been replaced by light sweaters and long-sleeved shirts. While the other students spent their last few minutes before the morning bell swapping stories about their weekend, Matt chose instead to wait for Simone at their usual rendezvous spot, a cluster of royal palm trees near the teacher’s parking lot. Blowing into his hands to keep them warm, he watched as the Goodman’s blue minivan made a left turn into the parking lot. Simone’s mother waved to him through the windshield, and he politely returned the gesture.

  Simone looked wonderful that morning. Dressed in a bright yellow outfit, with her raven hair tied back with a matching yellow scrunchy, she seemed to radiate sunshine. As Simone sprang from the passenger side of the van, she was already signing a mile a minute. She knew that she was running late, and there was so much she wanted to tell Matt about her exciting weekend.

  As was their usual routine, Matt and Simone would visit their lockers first thing, and then stroll upstairs to their homeroom, where saggy-eyed Iris Porter would be waiting for them. Matt and Simone had a standing gag that the woman never showered, and the fact that she sometimes wore the same clothes for two or three consecutive days tended to validate their suspicions.