Call Me Jane

by Ryan Maitland

  “Don’t sell yourself short!” Janet chided. “You’re something else! They spent all day yesterday debating this. When they were done, they seem to have come to a decision. That’s why I’m to take you directly to the board. They’re waiting for you…”

  “Oh,” was all I could say, feeling a pit in my stomach. “Do you know what they’ve decided?” I asked, hoping for a reprieve.

  “I wish I did,” she answered softly.

  “Oh… okay,” I sighed, trying hard not to panic. I didn’t know what I would do if this didn’t work. I’d probably have to go home, or try going on the run, or… resign myself to being homeless… or… or… I don’t know what…

  Janet pulled up to an empty spot in front of the building. She paused after shutting off the engine, apparently debating what she should do. I unfastened my seatbelt and stared at her, ready to follow her lead. She seemed to make a decision as she opened her door. I followed suit and let her lead me into the building. We stepped into the air-conditioned building, the wave of cold air hitting me in the face, making me shiver a little. I had gained some much-needed weight in the hospital, but I was still quite thin. It would be a while before I built up any kind of insulation.

  Rather than lead me to the right, down the hall where the testing had happened, she led me to the left, down a hall that led to some stairs. Halfway up the stairs, I had to stop her so I could sit for a moment and catch my breath. Janet looked sympathetic and sat beside me to wait with me.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, panting a little.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she waved me off.

  “It’s… just… I have…” I started, trying to get enough air to recover and explain my situation.

  “Jane,” Janet chided gently. “Really. Don’t worry about it. I figure it’s a medical condition, right?”

  “Right…” I answered, holding up my alert bracelet so she could see it.

  “Right,” she echoed, glancing at the bracelet before dismissing it. “Besides, it’s not like we can be late for this meeting. They can’t start without you.”

  “No… pressure…” I wheezed.

  “You’ll be fine,” she cajoled, smiling at me. “No matter what they decide, you’ll be a winner. If they figured out how you did it without supernatural abilities, they’ll probably offer you some kind of grant or internship, considering that you were so good that it took the whole board to figure it out. If they can’t figure it out, and concede that you really do possess supernatural powers of some kind, then you’ll be a million dollars richer!”

  “Good to know…” I said by way of thanks, finally getting my breath back. I stood up to indicate I was ready again and Janet led me to the upper story and to a door that looked like any other in this building. She opened it and motioned me inside, closing it behind me without coming inside, herself. It seems I’d have to do this part alone…

  I clutched the printouts I had gotten from the doctor to my chest protectively, trying to use them like a shield.

  In front of me was a long table with six people to a side and one at the other end. There were a mix of men and women and I paid them little attention even as they stared at me. It was the man at the end of the table that got my full attention. He was wearing a nicer suit than the others, and he accessorized with a black cane topped with a silver skull. His face was thin and lined with age, his cheeks made hollow. He had a hefty white beard with bushy eyebrows above pale blue eyes. He was bald, but I could see a black hat set aside on the table beside him. I focused on him because the look he gave me could skewer the confidence of those much stronger than me.

  “Please have a seat, Jane,” he nearly commanded, motioning to the seat directly opposite him.

  I did as he ordered, setting the printouts in front of me like they were notes for the meeting I found myself in.

  “Jane, my name is Cy Magus,” the old man at the other end of the table announced. “I’m the head of this board and started this foundation in an effort to root out frauds and confidence artists that prey on the vulnerable.”

  I nodded dumbly, not knowing what to say.

  “And now here you are,” he continued with a heavy sigh, his face going from stern to something more relaxed, maybe resignation? “You come in off the street, pale and thin as death, with nothing but the clothes on your back, and are tested as a special favor or out of sympathy, and you blow apart all that I’ve built!”

  “I’m sorry?” I squeaked, becoming more certain that they would kick me out or turn me in or something just as bad.

  The man’s face made another metamorphosis, this time to sympathy. “My dear, don’t be sorry,” he consoled. “What you’ve done seems to be the real deal.”

  “Seems to?” I asked, getting panicky.

  “I have just one more test I’d like you to do,” he answered, scrutinizing me.

  I gave a little sigh before asking, “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to read my mind,” he answered without pause.

  “I’ll need something of yours,” I countered.

  The man nodded before holding up his cane, passing it down the table, before it reached me. I took it, extending my other sense into it, testing the connection. The connection was strong, stronger even than Tommy’s toy car. I closed my eyes and looked at myself through his eyes. Through his eyes I looked like a scared little homeless girl looking for the big break that would turn her life around. I confess he wasn’t far from the truth!

  “This will work,” I told him, breaking my connection and looking him square in the eye.

  He gave a little nod, but then the man to my right, the one that had handed me the skull cane, pulled out a long length of fabric.

  “We’d like you to wear this blindfold,” the man to my right told me, getting up to stand behind me, making my fear shoot up higher. “So you can’t use what you see to trick us,” he further explained.

  “With your permission?” the old man, Magus, asked, gesturing to me.

  “I’m okay with it,” I answered a little softly, “as long as you don’t try anything funny or try to hurt me,” I added, mostly to broadcast how nervous they were making me.

  “No harm will come to you,” he assured me. Thanks to my connection through his cane, I could tell he absolutely meant every word he said. As long as he had any say, I’d be safe. I nodded my permission and the man behind me tied the fabric covering my eyes tight enough to ensure no light got in, but not tight enough to be really uncomfortable. I tried to look through the fabric, but it was thick enough and tied so tightly against my eyes that nothing got through.

  I nodded that I was ready, and Magus held up his fingers.

  “Three, two, five, one, one,” I intoned, narrating what he was doing. “Now you’re glaring at the other members not to make any sound to give me input,” I continued. “You’re thinking of them by name. Sarah, Wayne, Clarke, Emily,” I told them in a no-nonsense way. Through his eyes, I could see their eyes bulging.

  No flash, no show, no spectacle! Just straight-to-the point psychic powers! Magus thought a moment before I echoed his thoughts, startling him badly as he thought of the different ways I might have guessed it.

  “I’ve never heard of any of the scams and tricks you’re thinking of,” I told him, being careful to use my actual mouth, rather than my mental mouth. I figured that this little trick of getting into people’s heads and wearing their senses like a coat is weird enough. I worried that if they knew I could talk to them in their heads, that they would lock me up as entirely too dangerous to be allowed to see the light of day ever again, or worse, lock me up to study me!

  “Okay, Jane, I’m convinced,” Magus finally acceded with a heavy sigh. He made a motion for the man to my right, Jeff according to Magus’s mind, to untie the blindfold and take the cane. The man did so among murmurs from others at the table.

  For the first time since coming into this room, I felt hopeful that this would turn out well for me after all!


  “Let me be the first to congratulate you on winning the Magus foundation challenge,” the old man declared loudly, stopping all conversation around the table. “Having said that,” he continued, “I’d prefer that this didn’t get out… It would encourage those that are we are fighting against.”

  “You mean the scammers,” I filled in, my voice louder and more confident than before.

  “I do,” he agreed.

  “Great!” I shouted, surprising everyone in the, otherwise, quiet room. “I don’t want anyone to find out about this either! This… thing that I can do has caused me nothing but pain!”

  “How so?” the old man asked, almost glaring at me.

  How do I tell him? What can I say that won’t get them to call the cops landing me in a world of trouble?

  “Those that raised me,” I started, thinking carefully, “believed I was possessed by the devil. They treated me as such.” This got me a mix of horrified looks and sympathetic ones from around the table. The old man’s face softened ever so slightly. “If others knew what I could do…”

  “They’d either crucify you or deify you,” Magus answered quickly.

  “Exactly,” I agreed.

  “Then we are in agreement,” Magus decided. “You will not tell others that you won the challenge and we will keep your abilities secret.”

  “Thank you,” I told him with considerable relief.

  “However,” he shot at me, glaring at me again, “I insist that we get your full name.”

  “My name is Jane Doe,” I answered without hesitation.

  He quirked an eyebrow at me in clear disbelief. “That’s not your name,” he declared. “If we are to issue you a million-dollar check, we will need your real name.”

  “My real name?” I squeaked, my fear shooting up again.

  “Your real name,” he confirmed.

  With a heavy heart that felt like it was in my throat, and with tears of fear and shame, I answered, “My name is Gloria Allison Lujah…”

  This got me another quirk of the bushy eyebrow as he asked, “Glory hallelujah?”

  “That’s my real name,” I countered only mildly defensively, looking at the hospital papers on the table, not wanting to look at him as tears continued to fall from my eyes. “Please don’t tell anyone. I ran away from home for this. This is my one shot to get away from them! I can’t go back to them! Please don’t make me!” My voice gave out after this last plea and I choked back sobs as my mind raced with what I thought would happen now. The authorities would be called, the check would be issued, but the money would go to Jack and Billi who would punish me worse than ever for embarrassing them this way, even as they spent the money on themselves.

  “We don’t… have to tell the authorities, do we?” came a woman’s voice. I looked up to see who was defending me. It was the woman Magus had identified as Sarah that was begging the old man for leniency.

  “I believe we can work something out,” Magus announced, hands on his cane, never taking his eyes off me.

  My relief was immediate and explosive. Sarah looked at me and nodded, apparently deciding she would take over seeing that I was taken care of.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to the room, my voice reluctant to return.

  I would later learn that Jack and Billi had never even reported me missing. I don’t know what went through their minds or why they didn’t report me. It felt like one more jab in the gut demonstrating they just didn’t care about me.

  I learned later that shortly after this meeting, the Magus foundation announced that they would stop offering this reward. The official reason was that they wanted to free up the money for grants and scholarships and to stop spending money on testing. Now, nearly seventy years after this meeting, they’ve given me the green-light to give the real reason they stopped offering the reward. They stopped offering it because the money was no longer there. They gave it to me and hid it as a series of grants in an effort to keep the con-artists from trying to take advantage.

  I was happy to keep quiet about it all these years, after all, it was my first really big break! I only bring it up now because my story could not be told without this fateful meeting. Without them offering this reward, I would have died in that house with only the murderers knowing I even existed.

  Chapter 12

  On the Kindness of Strangers

  Sarah gave me a crash course in being an adult after that…

  First off, she took me to the hotel she was staying at and made me tell her all about my life and how I found myself in Florida for the challenge. I told her about Jack and Billi, including the canings and spankings. I told her of my typical day with them, but I confess I glossed over some of the more embarrassing parts, basically anything done in the bathroom. I also left out the part about seeing and talking to ghosts as visions of Billi screaming at me about being possessed by demons flashed through my head. I mostly glossed over the role Tommy played, saying I found out about the foundation through a news show that I overheard Jack and Billi watching.

  I had become remarkably adept at lying… It had become a survival skill for me, largely because of Billi…

  Sarah looked, at different times, appalled and sympathetic to my plight as I recounted my past before the foundation.

  “That’s it, you’re coming with me!” Sarah declared with a note of finality.

  I looked at the woman, trying to decide how far I should trust her. She was in her late thirties or early forties and taller than I was. She had deep brown hair that was almost black, that matched her dark brown eyes. She had fair skin that I would later learn was more the result of makeup than of genetics. She was on the plump side, but as she would call it, it was ‘pleasantly plump’ that was closer to healthy than the skinny supermodels were. Her face was perpetually set in a look of determination and confidence.

  My options had opened up ever so slightly, but I was still remarkably limited. I could trust this woman that had spoken up for me at the board meeting, or I could try to make a go of it on my own, or I could seek out help from others. Those were my options as I saw them.

  I threw in my lot with Sarah Foxx.

  “Um, Okay,” I told her, going with the flow and hoping that I wouldn’t regret this decision.

  The first thing that Sarah did was take me shopping for clothes. I figured she’d pay for the clothes from the money I’d be getting from the foundation, but she refused to let me pay for it, saying that any guardian should ensure their ward was properly attired. She complained, idly, that I was too skinny as she picked out one outfit after another. All in all, she bought me a complete wardrobe including pants, shirts, a few dresses, and the other various bits of clothing that are necessary. Most of the clothes she had picked were slightly too large, in the hope that I would fill them out as I grew to a healthier weight.

  I wore one of the new outfits, some jeans and a t-shirt, on our flight back to her hometown of Omaha. I worried, slightly, about the stares I was sure I’d get in the airport terminal, but I got fewer stares than I had at the bus terminal. I think part of that was because I was no longer unaccompanied and I was wearing an outfit that mostly hid how thin I still was.

  After that, she basically adopted me. She got with her lawyer and they worked out a deal with Jack and Billi that would allow Sarah to take on the full responsibility for my care, forcing Jack and Billi to give up all rights to me. In exchange for this, Sarah would not press charges of abuse and neglect on my behalf. Sarah even made it so that I didn’t have to meet with my two former captors! That alone was enough to endear me to the woman!

  “Would it be possible to legally change my name?” I asked Sarah at one point over dinner.

  “Certainly,” she told me, an odd look on her face. “What were you thinking?” she asked.

  “I’d like to become Jane Doe, for real, but keep my middle name,” I told her, fidgeting with my food at the dinner table.

  After that, Sarah stared at me for such a long time that
I worried that I had offended her somehow.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, sounding more worried than I wanted to.

  “Nothing,” she smirked and shook her head, slightly. “For a moment, I thought you might want to take my last name.”

  I confess that, at the time, that thought had never even occurred to me.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Sarah reassured, “I would have been flattered, but I would probably have advised that you either keep your last name or maybe take your mother’s maiden name if you preferred.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want me to take your last name?” I asked, trying to take back the offense to this wonderful woman.

  “Because I’m just a waystation for you, dear,” she told me with a small smile and a face full of wisdom. By this time, I knew she had several grown children of her own, that I would later meet, though they would be a little cold to me, probably seeing me as some kind of intruder into their family.

  “I don’t know my mom’s maiden name,” I confessed, more than a little embarrassed. “I chose Jane Doe because I’m nobody…”

  “You are not nobody!” she asserted sharply. “You accomplished something that thousands have been unable to do. Never forget that.”

  “But I want to be nobody!” I pleaded, tears stinging my eyes. “I just want to fade away and be happy. If I can use… whatever it is that I can do to help people, quietly, then I will, but… I’d rather people didn’t know about it…”

  “Because you worry they’ll try to use you,” she answered, more a statement than a question.

  “Or they’ll see it the way Jack and Billi did,” I added.

  Sarah stared at me again long enough to make me uncomfortable. Once I started squirming, she saved me by saying, “I’ll have the lawyer look into it.”

  I would learn, much later, that she had agreed to my pick for a last name because, despite what I had thought at the time, the name Jane Doe is a staggeringly uncommon name. Sarah thought that I was ‘deceptively special’ and so I should get a deceptively special name to go with it!