Call Me Jane

by Ryan Maitland

  “We need to know where he is,” Earl told me, his voice sounding far away.

  I think I nodded in understanding as I whispered, “Where the hell am I?” This was a trick I was getting better at. When I speak softly, most people hear my voice as if it was theirs, since most people don’t figure they’d hear any voice but their own in their heads. This helps guide their thoughts in the direction I want them to go.

  At first, I could only coax answers of ‘Isil prison’ and ‘hell’ but after a few more tries, I managed to get a more detailed answer after asking the question, “How the hell did I get here?”

  I relayed the details to Earl, who seemed to be relaying them to someone else. I was careful to get the soldier’s wording right, since I don’t speak tactical… It made little sense to me, but Earl seemed to understand it perfectly.

  “The cavalry is on the way,” Earl informed me. “Forty, fifty minutes, tops.”

  Just then, more men came into the dim hut where the prisoners were being kept. They were shouting in a language I didn’t understand. The soldier whose mind I was riding understood some of the words, though, so I was able to get a rough idea of what was happening. When the soldier translated the words ‘kill them’ and ‘message’ my blood ran cold as he realized what was going to happen.

  The man that was guarding the prisoners opened the cage and manhandled the soldier I was riding. We had been chosen to send a message in blood and death…

  With horror, I saw images flash in the soldier’s mind of videotapes he’d seen of Isil executing prisoners in bloody, painful, ways. I gasped and my eyes teared up with sorrow even as I gripped the toothbrush harder.

  “They’re going to kill him!” I screamed, my voice choking on the words.

  Earl tried to wrestle the toothbrush out of my hands, but I fought him! I think Peter and Wendy got in on the act too, as I heard him slam into a wall.

  “NO!” I screamed at him. “I won’t let him die alone!”

  I sat back in my chair, resolute to stay with him until the bitter end, and beyond if I had to!

  “Freres Jacques, Freres Jacques!” I crooned gently to him, loud enough that he wouldn’t mistake the voice for his. The cavalry was still too far away to save him. There would be no happy ending, not in this life, not for him. The least I could do was be there to give him what comfort I could…

  “Dormez-vous! Dormez-vous!” I continued. I could feel the soldier humming along with me, confirming he could hear me.

  He and I sang together right up until the machete swung…

  It wasn’t a clean death. They hacked away several times, though the man was dead after the third swing…

  Needless to say, I screamed… loudly… I screamed loud enough that if I had had neighbors, they would have called for the police, convinced of bloody murder… They wouldn’t have been far wrong… There was a bloody murder… it was just happening on the other side of the planet…

  With the soldier dead, I dropped the toothbrush to the floor, my eyes heavy with tears making steady streams down my face. I could barely breathe, both from the horror of what had just happened as well as my nose clogging up as I bawled for a man I had never met, never knew.

  “Why are you crying, little lady?” came the voice that was at once familiar, yet alien. He spoke in a Texan drawl that was full of concern. I looked up to see a man in a black and tan camouflage uniform, suddenly clean and fresh. His hair was cut short to the point that it was just shy of being shaved. He was tall and broad, but his face was kind and full of concern.

  “Because I couldn’t save you,” I choked out in a hoarse whisper.

  “Oh, honey,” he soothed, getting down on one knee to look me in the eye. “I was already gone. Nobody could save me. But you,” he crooned, a small smile coming to his lips, “you made sure I wasn’t alone. That makes you an angel in my book.”

  “I’m no angel,” I rebuffed, sniffing loudly. “Nobody should die alone, not like that.”

  “See? Angel,” the man smirked. “Can I ask you for another favor?” he asked, looking sheepish.

  “Anything,” I sighed, wishing I could do more.

  “Tell my wife I love her,” he told me, solemnly.

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Thank you,” he said, relief evident in his voice. He stood up, then, and… faded… I don’t know if there’s a heaven or an afterlife, but if there is, I hope he made it to a better place than this… a place where evil loses.

  “Jane? Jane!” Earl was shouting, almost screaming at me! “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I told him miserably. “He died and there was nothing I could do to stop it! What’s more, he forgave me!” I bawled, not feeling remotely worthy of forgiveness.

  “Because there’s nothing to forgive,” Earl admonished gently. “You did everything you could! And more! You held on longer than you should have!”

  “I held on as long as necessary!” I rebuked, getting angry with him.

  “Jane…” Earl whispered, his face showing deep concern. “Your neck…”

  He tried to touch my neck, but I jerked away, my hands coming up to inspect it. I hadn’t noticed before, but my neck had become tender to the touch and it hurt to move my head too much.

  “You’re bruised!” Earl remarked, fear and wonder warring on his face and in his voice.

  “Must be from the machete,” I remarked softly, my hand trying to hide whatever offending discoloration must be there.

  “Oh,” was all he said as he slumped back in his chair.

  “Hey, Earl?” I asked after I had collected myself a bit more. “Can I pass on a favor I was asked?”

  “Favor? What kind of favor?” he asked, his voice now concerned.

  “The man that…” I paused as I fought to get the words out, but my mind refused to let them pass to my mouth, as if saying them out loud somehow made them more real.

  “The soldier?” Earl prompted.

  I nodded in agreement and continued, “He asked that I do him another favor… He wants me to tell his wife he loves her…”

  “I can take care of that,” Earl said with a sigh. “I can pass on testimony that he said that. It won’t even be a lie…”

  “Thank you,” I told him after a moment, shamefully relieved that I wouldn’t have to tell the wife what had happened.

  “Is he here, now?” Earl asked after what felt like a long time.

  I shook my head, wiping more tears from my face. “He left… or… faded… or… or…”

  “I understand,” Earl told me, sympathy heavy in his voice. “I’ll pack up my equipment. I’ll make sure the wife knows and that the money gets wired, with a bonus for your pain and suffering. Thank you for your service.”

  I had gone mute again, so I merely nodded as Earl went about packing up like he had never been there. He even made sure to grab the toothbrush that had fallen to the floor.

  After he had gone, I wailed for a long, long, time. I think it was Wendy that brought Mr. Fluffybutt to me. I gripped that little bunny the way a drowning man grips a life preserver!

  This would prove to be only the first mission to leave a lasting psychological scar on me… This would, by no means, be the last, however…

  Chapter 22

  Project Aesop

  I confess that I sort of moped around for several days after that, both at home and at work. It was the first time I had ever been in someone’s head when they died. It’s one thing to hear about terrorists killing people on the news, it’s something else to see it, and is completely different to experience it in a way that feels firsthand!

  After that, I started sleeping with Mr. Fluffybutt, the ugly, to some, stuffed animal that looked like it had been doctor Frankenstein’s favorite toy growing up. The feelings of safety and love, that seemed to permeate the animal to its core, helped keep the nightmares at bay and kept me functional during the day.

  I had Mr. Fluffybutt by my side as I worked the register at Anne’s Antiques whe
n Earl came into the shop, once again clad in a black suit and fedora that made him stick out like a Floridian in the Midwest in the fall (just trust me on this). I hadn’t told Anne about his visits and I had no intention to. I got the impression that telling someone you work for the CIA is a strict no-no, even if it is just moonlighting…

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed at the man.

  “Well, you weren’t at home, so I figured you’d be here!” he answered as if this was the simplest thing in the world. “By the way, would you mind telling your… housemate that I’m your friend? There’s dents all over my car!”

  Okay, I confess this made me smile a little. I’d have to reward the kids later for that! I should also get some more gravel for the driveway; it seems to make for some seriously good ammunition!

  “Nope,” I told Earl bluntly. “The kids don’t like strangers coming around. Next time you want to come to my house, call first. Also, never show up to my house when I’m not there. Clear?”

  “All right, fine!” he conceded, only mildly rebuffed. “Now, back to business! Is there a place we can talk in private?”

  “I can’t leave the register,” I scowled, trying to think of where we could go, and when. Best bet would probably be for lunch, when Anne covered the register for me, which would give me a grand total of forty-five minutes when I could leave without drawing attention. The question then became where we could go! If I got into his car, this might draw the attention of sheriff Carter, who often made a point of driving down the main street several times a day, including during my lunch break when I would sometimes eat outside and enjoy the sun on my face. The weather was certainly warm enough for a picnic lunch, though the forecast said snow later in the week…

  “How sensitive is this?” I asked him in a whisper.

  “Sensitive enough,” he answered cryptically.

  “Public place with few people, mostly tourists?” I rebuffed.

  Earl seemed to consider this for a long moment before asking, “How public?”

  “There’s a picnic area behind one of the local shops on this street,” I answered. “I often have my lunch there, so it won’t seem unusual for me to be there. You can’t see it from the street and there’s usually only a few people there even at the busiest times.”

  “That could work,” he nodded. “Good. I’ll meet you there!”

  “Don’t you need to know when I get off for lunch, or where it is I’m talking about?” I asked, slightly annoyed.

  In response, Earl just smiled at me like he already knew the answers to those questions before leaving the shop…

  Okay, I probably shouldn’t be too surprised that someone working for the nation’s spy agency was actually, you know, spying on me, but at that point in my life, I hadn’t actually considered it as a possibility!

  Oh, to be that young and naïve again…

  While I ate my lunch of a bacon and turkey sandwich, chips, and coffee, Earl informed me that the video he took of me impressed the hell out of the top brass. While the cavalry wasn’t fast enough to save the soldier, they were fast enough to catch the terrorists and obtain the video they had recorded before they could release it to the world. Earl said that in the video the terrorists had created, the soldier could be heard to be humming Freres Jacques moments before… that. Everyone was so impressed, according to Earl, that they authorized my meeting the rest of Project Aesop.

  “Project Aesop?” I asked Earl, taking a sip of coffee.

  “Officially it was decommissioned in the seventies,” Earl informed me. “Unofficially, though, we’ve always had a few psychics on staff.”

  “So…” I hesitated at the thought, wanting to believe it, but not quite ready to believe it. “There are other psychics out there? Like me?”

  “Other psychics, yes,” Earl hedged, “but nobody like you. You’re like no other psychic we’ve ever seen!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, wanting to get as much information out of him as possible, since he seemed to be in a chatty mood.

  “Jane, you’re a strong broadcaster and sensitive with a perfect accuracy rate for both!” Earl impressed upon me. “What’s more, you actually beat the Magus foundation challenge!”

  I merely shrugged, not seeing what the big deal was. I had no baseline to compare where I was with the norm. For me, getting into people’s heads and talking to them in the same manner was my normal.

  “Let me put it like this,” Earl explained. “We have a pair of remote viewers, RVs for short, that are able to see far distant places with just a suggestion of a target. They have a hit rate of maybe forty to fifty-five percent if we’re being generous. You, on the other hand, even at the most conservative estimate, have a hit rate of at least ninety percent!”

  “So, I’m a freak…” I stated, a little sourly.

  “Pff!” Earl scoffed. “Normal is overrated!”

  “Normal would have meant not being tortured all my life!” I sneered, getting upset.

  “I heard about the scars on your back,” Earl told me solemnly.

  “How did you hear about that?” I demanded. Earl was still mostly a stranger to me and I didn’t like the idea of him knowing much more about me than I did about him! I’m usually the one that knows more about people than they know about me!

  Earl shrugged a shoulder, muttering, “Nurses… orderlies… people talk and gossip.”

  I could have screamed in frustration at that point, but I took some calming breaths, stroked Mr. Fluffybutt’s back a few times, before asking the question that this conversation seemed to be leading to. “So, what happens now?”

  “Now,” Earl told me, smiling again, “I fly you out to meet the rest of the team!”

  “Now?” I asked, alarmed at the suddenness of all this.

  “Tonight,” he conceded. “I’ll pick you up after work, assuming I don’t get pelted with gravel again…”

  “I’ll tell the kids to go easy on you,” I snorted, rolling my eyes at him.

  “Much appreciated!” he beamed before getting up and letting me finish my lunch in peace.

  That evening, Earl came out as promised and I got the kids to leave him alone, mostly… They kept an eye on him because they were still suspicious of him and protective of me, but Earl didn’t need to know that.

  He drove me to the airport, where we skipped all the usual screenings and checks, and headed to a private jet. Earl and I seemed to be the only passengers and he wouldn’t let me open the blinds on any of the windows. The flight lasted several hours, though I don’t know where we landed. From there, Earl and I rode in the back of a car with blacked-out windows to some kind of underground garage. Earl led the way to an elevator and we descended several more floors to a windowless basement of concrete walls, carpeted floors, and bad fluorescent lighting.

  The thought that I had just been abducted by a strange man, taken on a plane to who-knows-where, driven to some unknown basement, then going further underground to a place where nobody would be able to hear my screams occurred to me, as I clutched Mr. Fluffybutt in my oversized shoulder bag for comfort.

  I was immediately set upon by a large man that could have doubled for Santa Claus if his light brown beard had been white. He was, I think, in his mid-to-late-forties and was wearing khaki pants that I suspected had an elastic waistband, along with a beige shirt tucked neatly into the slightly lighter pants. Over all this, the man wore a blue sweater-vest that clashed with the rest of his outfit. His beard was light brown and rested on his sternum and might have been covering a tie of some kind. He also wore large, gold-rimmed, glasses over dark brown eyes. The hair atop his head was mildly better groomed than his beard, though it still stuck out in one or two places even as it was thinning in the middle.

  The man had the nerve to try to grab Mr. Fluffybutt!

  “My, oh my!” the man exclaimed, looking to grab my bag! “What is this?”

  “HANDS OFF!” I screamed at him, backing quickly away from him, my back nearly hitting
the elevator doors.

  The man looked startled, like he hadn’t known I was there, then deeply ashamed as he realized what he had almost done.

  “I’m sorry,” he told me, putting his hands behind his back in an effort to make himself look menacing. “I just felt… something amazing was in that bag and I just lost my head. I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

  My nerves, which were already on edge, calmed somewhat at seeing how sincere he was in his apology.

  Now, dear readers, I will remind you that the names in this book, aside from mine and Mr. Fluffybutt, are fictional, and I use them to both protect their identities and to give you an idea of what they’re like and how I feel about them. Having said that, prepare for more oddball names…

  “I should introduce myself,” the greedy Santa lookalike stated. “My name is Theodore Bear and I’m an empath, or as the agency calls me, a Shrinker.”

  “Empath? Shrinker?” I asked, confused. I was keeping myself between him and Mr. Fluffybutt, lest he try to take him again.

  “It means I can feel what you’re feeling,” he clarified, giving me a gentle smile.

  “We often ask him to sit in on sensitive interrogations,” Earl informed me. “He’s good at detecting lies that might get past seasoned agents. He also serves as the company shrink, since he’s one of the few qualified individuals with the necessary clearances.”

  “I’m also a psychologist in real life!” the man joked. “May I ask, just what is it you have in there? And may I touch it, just once?”

  I recognized the look of longing in the man’s face. I’m pretty sure I had the same look when I first felt the power of Mr. Fluffybutt. I looked to Earl for his take on the request and he shrugged with a smile, which I think meant Theodore was an okay sort.

  I turned and slowly took out Mr. Fluffybutt, but held him close to my chest, which probably made me look like a scared little kid. Looking back, that’s probably not too far from the truth…