The story so far:
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" -> (6 skipped) -> "TSNK 8: The End is Near" -> "TSNK 9:Rise of Power"
“Consciousness is a word worn smooth by a million tongues. Depending upon the figure of speech chosen it is a state of being, a substance, a process, a place, an epiphenomenon, an emergent aspect of matter, or the only true reality…” George Miller, 1962
It was an amazing feat, and Jimmy Silent Garcia felt a swell of pride at his accomplishments. Who, he wondered, had such a grasp of retribution, of righteousness? Certainly not God.Not He, who takes with a merciless, random hand.Yet, His rules were not to be ignored, His commandments not to be discarded. Although Jimmy had little faith that God Himself would right the unbalance, unfairness, of his own discipline, he did believe that He would reward Jimmy for righting that very wrong. Jimmy’s task was one self specified, but God would not fault him that one indiscretion. After all, through justice Jimmy had found forgiveness for God. The All Mighty would return the favor.
Once, Jimmy was a young man with a phenomenal gift. He’d been rational, entrenched in the belief that good things rewarded good people, and Karma, though not idolized was a card often played from God’s own hand. That, he knew now, was the theory of a contrived society. God was Random. God did not punish those who committed the most heinous of sins against Him; he punished like a child wielding an all-powerful sword, too big for his own hands to control. He punished more often than not, the innocent.
Like Anita and Marcus.
A frozen image of the mother and son narrowed Jimmy’s eyes. The details would always be clear; Anita’s dark locks spilling across her shoulders, her eyes on her son, full of love and hope. The boy would forever be in the arms of his mother, and though his hair and expression mimicked his mother’s, his eyes belonged to his father. To Jimmy.
The surge of hatred never ceased to surprise Jimmy. His Gift had been useless, his power limited to watching his wife and child scream in fright and pain as the fire swept through the small apartment. His family turned to ashes and their killer walked, leaving behind only the trace of gasoline and the ebb of a match.
Jimmy found solace in pain, in revenge. His Gift was twisted into something gnarled and volatile. The first few he killed by his own hand, applying sins to their faces, mentally avenging the arbitrary deaths of his wife and child.
Now, more than a decade later, he knows that he has crafted the perfect court of God, where there are no appeals, there is no mercy and those who sin are punished without remorse.
He thinks of Miguel Sanchez, and his tattoo of the upside down cross, splayed across his shoulders. Miguel was perhaps one of his finer moments; punished by his own hands, Jimmy sitting a mere three feet away. There would be no plaque around the neck of Miguel Sanchez, but Jimmy knew the crime, and whispered them to the bloody sinner as he gasped for dying breath.
Thou Shalt Not Worship False Idols, Miguel.
Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut, and conjured the image of a familiar face. Of the Ten Commandments that Jimmy would puppeteer deaths for, only two remained. Two. Jimmy concerted his intentions, the face in his mind and the final resolution for the poor, sinful soul.
***
Charlie saw the neon sign blinking ahead, and in the impending nightfall, the words appeared to float outside their bulbs, to pop!
Repent NOW! Sinners Will Find Forgiveness At Holy Trinity, Church of God!Charlie's gift was weak in comparison with others. Others like Jimmy, and Adara. They could both kill me if they wanted to. Charlie sped across the four lane highway behind Doland Street. Distance was his only ally. He would put four hundred miles between himself, Jimmy and Adara by sunrise. He floored the accelerator, bounced over a set of railroad tracks and jammed his head on the door jamb.
“Goddammit!”
Another set of tracks, and bouncing over it, Charlie felt the sensation of someone at his back. He swiveled in his seat, and saw only the empty backseat of the Jeep.
“You better leave me the **** alone, Jimmy! I know you’re sneaking into my mind, but you and your God are finishing this one without me. Just leave me the hell out of it!”
No answer of course. But the feeling of someone watching him, probing him did not abate. Charlie gave the Jeep all he had, flying towards the rural blacktop just across the next set of tracks.
The lights of the train blinded him, and suddenly Charlie understood why he didn’t see them before. A moment of clarity, of knowing, washed over him as the train collided with Jeep, with man, and with intention.
***
For the first time, a dream, a vision comes to me that is not premonitory. In my mind, I have taken a giant leap into a place of my past; it’s scent is that of frying bacon, it’s climate is cool and dry, and from down stairs I hear the faint shuffling of Grandmother, the sizzle of pork…
I was eight years old. The house was clapboard grey and the wind whistled through the cracks and crept into my very bones. My bed was creaky and old. The coverlet was worn and thin and I shivered beneath it’s grace, clinging to the edges of sleep.
It was still dark outside and the smell that wafted from the kitchen below was clear evidence that Grandmother had gotten an early start on her day.
I was eight years old. Only eight. In that house, I was old enough to help out with chores when I came to stay in the summers and on weekends; to pull weeds until my fingers blistered, yet I was too young to ride the tractor. I was old enough to watch Grandfather slaughter his pigs, chickens and sometimes put the occasional cow down when it had grown old and weak, yet I was too young to bathe with the door closed. I was too young to hear the sordid details of the sins my mother and father committed, the sins I inherited, the sins for which I was scrubbed clean of, in hot, torrid water. Yet, I was grown enough to listen to the Bible stories Grandfather would recite from his rocker, the ones at the end of the Book that would keep me up at night imaging fire balls shooting from Heaven, or stories of men sacrificing their children because God had told them to do so.
“Never question God, little Adara. He is the Keeper and the Light, and when he commands, you shall deliver whatever He asks.”
Grandmother would nod, rubbing her dry, arthritic fingers together, her eyes gleaming with some glorious knowledge that the rest of the world was not yet privy to.
“Who would kill their own child? I don’t understand, Grandfather! Why would God ask anyone to hurt their own child?” I was usually asked to sit on the floor at Grandfather’s feet while he read. It was from this position that I asked him my burning questions.
He looked down his nose to me, his eyes so like my own were colored with something I could not describe at such a delicate age. Now, I know that look very well. I see it in the eyes of patients often. It’s the look of a man captive of his own mind; without reason, without sanity.
“Don’t EVER question the authority of GOD! Child? Do you wish to burn? To burn in HELL?” Grandfather dropped his voice, babbled his apologies to his God, on my behalf. A child, yes, but not a forgetful one. I never forgot the whipping Grandfather thrashed on me for questioning God, nor would I ask those questions again.
I was tired of these visions, these dreams, and now this sudden and painful jog into my childhood. I spent the better part of my life running from visions, escaping guilt rendered by dreams. Creating reasonable doubt for my own inabilities to save victims had become my habit, and before long, I morphed into the coward that I saw reflected in the glass panes of my office bookcase. I felt every inch of one.
Because, of course, I knew. I knew the answer and yet it resigned itself to that space in my conscious mind that is a mere holding tank, waiting for me to muscle up the aptitude to pull it free.
The corner of my office was dim, but for the table lamp. I huddled between the oak filing cabinet and the potted ficus tree. The glass fronted bookcase opposite where I crouch tossed back reflections of a frightened, uncertain woman. For once, I agreed; that’s likely who I have always been.
On the other hand, her time had come. Some things in life were just to critical to leave to such a woman. Tired, indeed, but I willed myself to take it slow, to think. I knew that this battle would not be won on any fields I had ever seen with an awake eye, but on the littered and unbalanced plane in my mind, and in HIS.
My eyes lingered on the stack of files I carried into my office. All of them, all eleven, gathered to a single, neat pile. Lipscomb’s files. Patient files I had yet to read, with the exception of Nona Flores and Will Engram. The nagging in the back of my mind, usually so receptive, became a tug. There were answers in those files, and I knew that time was precious. Paige hung in the balance.
Pulling the files to the carpeted space between my outstretched legs, I began to flip them open, yanking the first page from each one, the patient’s priority information and photograph. I tossed the files aside and spread the documents out. The first two were files I had already seen; Nona and Will. Their faces stared up at me, and I saw them not against the blue/grey backdrop of a medical snap shot, but against wooden crosses, stretched and bloody.
The tug became stronger. Insistent.
The next photo; Barton Velkamp. His face shined with grease, his hair a coppery swatch across his forehead. Abruptly, I see his body splayed across a wooden cross, I recall his wounds, his placard bearing his sin.
The wash of intuition and excitement flooded through me and I knew that I had found the thread to unravel this tapestry of evil. I scanned through the names, the photos, my heart hammering in my chest, my fingers shaking as I held each page.
With each name and face came the image of one of the crucified victims I witnessed nearly three weeks before, in the depths of that early vision. Like a recessive memory, their faces became stronger, recognizable with each photo, each name. Realization dawned on me as each of Lipscomb’s patients became a victim, one I have seen. Some of their names were familiar, some were not, but their dead faces identified them. Eliza Crawford, Amelia Degli,
Franco sister was seeing Lipscomb? Little Eliza Crawford?
Victor Bochelli, Father Vincent Preston, Charlie Davis,
Oh my God. Charlie was his patient? Father Preston? What is going on?
I flipped the to the last few pages, Miguel Sanchez, Jimmy Garcia and suddenly, my daughter’s face is stared back at me. Paige Davis.
Paige. Not possible. She was seeing a therapist last year, trying to come to terms with our divorce, with her father’s absence. But Lipscomb? Wouldn’t I have known?
And the answer, of course, is no. Patients have autonomy when they have local family in practice. They are instructed to keep their doctor’s identity private. The fear is that one may pressure the other for personal information, for insight to a loved one. I assumed it was a child psychologist. Paige had Wednesday sessions at St. Stephens; Lispcomb must have visited her there.
Floored at the information, I held eleven pages, eleven files in my hand. Of those, I could clearly see the deaths of eight, leaving Charlie, Paige and a face and name I couldn‘t place. Paige, I had to hope, was still alive. Charlie, I could care less. One name stood alone, unmarred by any knowledge of death, or any vision of crucifixion. The eleventh file. Jimmy Garcia. I reached for his file, replaced the photo and profile into the first slot, and began to read.
***
Franco Delgi spent the last fifteen years of his life washing the images of unsaved, unwarranted deaths from his mind. With the Gift, came conditions. And one of those conditions was that he was never allowed the right to interfere. It was said, it was law and he would obey. He didn’t question, and his father and grandfather before never questioned either. Franco was a delegate of Protectors honored by his ancestry, his lineage. He found others, through his life, that shared his Gift, but never his Knowledge. Adara shared the Gift; she was powerful as any he’d been privy to, in lore and in experience. Their connection was strong; it was more than the sum of their interests, their attraction. He was allowed love and family. Those were not conditions of his Guardianship. So he protected her as he was instructed, loved her on his own, and prayed that one day, she would understand her Sight for what it was; a Key. Knowledge was something given to a Guardian, and not learned. Franco held a flood of information on the Gifted he was to protect, including his wife. He knew Adara’s weakness’, her past, her history, her first vision. He knew that it was his own father who came to Adara in her childhood, to present her with her Key, differentiating her from the others. Most importantly, Franco would never allow her see her own sin, never allow her to remember. It was his only betrayal of his power, but such a small one. With a mental shove, that part of her life would rest in the depth of an inactive hemisphere. Would, with time, wilt to nothingness. He hoped.
Methra was driving. She kept her eyes glued to the road, with only the occasional flick to Franco to see if he was anywhere near pinning down Adara. So far, Franco had nothing. The city limits were no more than thirty miles ahead and Methra plunged her foot down on the accelerator.
Paige lay in a crumpled heap in the back seat. She kept her eyes closed, her fingers intertwined. She looked as if she were praying. Franco knew that wasn’t so. She was forgetting. It was a part of the process. She too, had the Gift, and maybe as powerful as her mother’s. She would embrace it, eventually, he thought, and hopefully she would push the image of her own hands slicing her captor with his own razor, to a recess in her mind far, far away.
***
I tossed the last file down, now a heap of papers and stained with tears. I was not any closer to knowing the answers, but had a vague idea of what lay ahead. Each file spelled out the undeniable connections.
Eleven files, ten of them, victims, in some way or another of a man powerful enough to reach into their minds, to fondle with their motor skills, their emotions, to force himself upon them like a rapist.
I pushed aside the bombshell; that Charlie, Paige, and Amelia were all coincidentally patients of Lipscomb. What wasn’t coincidence, was that each patient in the file, in the privacy of their sessions with Lipscomb, were marked as PSI’s, psychologist’s term for those who have abilities, or claim abilities of paranormal activity, psycho kinesis and E.S.P. Everyone in the file was Gifted, with one exception. Jimmy Garcia. His file was unusual empty, with only family history. Lipscomb made several notations, one in particular stood out.
Patient is very quiet. Makes eye contact, seems reactive, but no communication. Known alias-Silent Jimmy.
Eleven files, all gifted but one. All given to me, as transfer patients. Most were dead, and the one unknown in the pile, Jimmy Garcia was locked behind bars. There was a connection there, and I flipped through the files and papers once again, searching for something I had read…something that seemed relevant. I jerked out the profile of Miguel Sanchez. This was it.
Cell mate, Jimmy Garcia, also known as Silent Jimmy, is also a patient. See corresponding file.That was it. Silent Jimmy-the one I could not read, the one I could not sense. I closed my eyes, willed myself to breathe, to think clearly, for Paige’s sake.
With an abrupt start, I doubled over in agony. My head pounded with jackhammers, my eyes watered and my nerves began to twitch.
He was in my mind, I could feel him.
Adara, you are clever. I underestimated your abilities.
I know who you are.
Really? Please…enlighten me.
Your name is Jimmy Garcia. You reside in the Nevada State Penitentiary for three counts of murder. Your wife and daughter were killed in a fire twe-
STOP! You know nothing about me. You play games, Adara. I wouldn’t play games with your daughter so vulnerable.
Where is she, Jimmy? She has nothing to do with anything your sick mind has invented. She’s a child.
I know. And yet, she has committed a crime. I watched her do it myself.
What did you do to her! Goddammit tell me!
Tssk, Tssk, Adara. Watch your mouth. God will smote thee, I assure you.
Do you know where your ability comes from? This ability to force yourself into my head?
God, of course.
What do you want with me, with us?
Let me tell you something Adara, about being inside someone’s mind, someone’s essence. When you know someone inside, and out, know the crevices of their mind and what they fear the most, love the most, hide the most, you can use them. It’s the grandest form of Mastery. But you…you! I can speak to you, yet I can not MOVE you. Why? Because I know of you, but not inside you. It’s the conundrum of a man with a gift as powerful as mine.
Quale. Psychology 101, Jimmy. The sense of consciousness that relays to us what it is like to be someone, see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel. Everything has qualia, yet it’s each living organisms own experience. You can not share someone’s qualia.
Oh, can’t you? I beg to differ Adara. My gift was powerful, even when I didn’t know how to use it. But once I discovered that those who I knew on a deep, personal level could be controlled, well…you can connect the dots.
I don’t believe you.
Of course you do, Adara. Lipscomb was a skittish, aging bastard. He thought he could pluck me of all my little indiscretions and secrets. I watched his mouth move and his eyes jerk back and forth and I realized that with my Gift, I could find a place inside of him. Once that was done, it was only a matter of time before he provided me with every patient he’d come into contact with that had our Gift. Our Touch. Only the gifted can be tapped, Adara. So I had my list of gifted sinners, or would-be sinners. I had their files and eventually sat in on every session, inside the mind of the ole’ Doc himself. I came to know them, Adara. I came to understand them. And through that, I pushed myself into them, used them. It’s the only way.
The only way to what?
The only way to get to you, of course.
***
I felt the urge to vomit. When he pulled out of me, it resonated with the sickening vacuum of emptiness. I couldn’t wash him out of my mind, yet I felt dirty and violated. My head tried to process too quickly the things he told me. I didn’t question why he obliged me and answered my questions. Jumping to my feet, I raced to grab the keys from their spot on the corner of Methra’s desk in the reception area. I didn’t have time for the elevator and pounded down the emergency stairs to the parking garage below. Without direction, not knowing where I was going, I relied on my instincts to propel me. I had no other choice.The car chimed as I slipped the key into the ignition and gunned the engine. The smell of frying bacon is sudden and jolted me; I’m no longer in my car, hand on the gear shift-I’m lying on the old, creaky bed at my
Grandmother’s house and I am eight years old. My room is cold as usual, and I’m huffing clouds of icy breath. I hear the pots and pans clanking downstairs. I smell the bacon frying and hear the scrape of something metal, probably the chair leg across the worn floor. Grandmother is cooking breakfast. I should be down there.
I try to stretch and my body screams out in agony! The pain is searing, ripping through my limbs and my skin is blistered and tender. For a moment, I focus all the hate I can upon my Grandparents. I hate them. I wouldn’t lie, if asked, but nobody’s ever asked. I flirt with the idea of running away, but that would mean running from Momma and Daddy and I couldn’t do that. Besides, I tried before to tell Momma what Grandfather says, what Grandmother does. Momma said it was just that way when she was a child. She says I’ll live through it, they are just old and set in their ways. I hate them.
I dress quietly, pulling the church dress over my head and stifling back sobs as the fabric rubs and scrapes against my raw skin.
I had asked too many questions, Grandfather had said. I was a sinner and Mother was a sinner, and my Father was a sinner and by God, I would be cleansed. Grandmother seemed to understand this and prodded me up the stairs to the bath. She kept her smile, and didn’t utter a word, as she sat me in the cast iron tub and poured the scalding water down my back and over my face. She used a bar of lye and a coarse scrap of burlap from the rice bags in the shed and scrubbed my body, every inch of it, until my skin was red and raw and in places, bleeding. When I looked up, Grandfather was smiling in the doorway. I was coming clean, he said. Coming clean.
I know I better get a move on. I won’t risk more punishment like last night’s bath. I get the dress on and pad my way to the door. The smell of bacon has turned, and now, I get the faint odor of burning pork, charring meat. I twist the handle and turn toward the stairwell. Smoke is drifting up, little tendrils chasing the ones before it and in a moment, a gulf of warm, smoky air is pushing up the stairs and into the hall. I drop to my knees, and I’m scared, so scared. I can smell the burn of wood, of plastic, of…
My eyes fly open. I can smell the scent of that fire, still lingering in the air. The car is still humming and my hand hasn’t moved from the gear shift. I shift into gear, grind the car out of it’s slot and lurch into the ever darkening night. I still have no idea where I’m going, and now, the sickening scent of death is overwhelming my senses.
Jimmy inclined his head. He was intrigued. More than that, he was astonished. What was that he just witnessed, in the theatre of Adara’s mind? She seemed reluctant to her memory, shaken by it’s tenacity. It was as if, Jimmy wondered, she couldn’t remember. As if she’d forgotten what she’d done. From Jimmy’s mouth, a peal of laughter, perhaps the only resonant sound he’d made in years.
***
Franco jerked upright in the seat. “Methra! Something is different. I can feel her moving, but…” He sat back, exasperated.
“But what? What is it Franco?”
“It’s as if she isn’t there. It’s someone else. It’s him, I think.”
“Well, find a way to pin her down, Franco. We are running out of time. You can’t protect her if we don’t know where she’s going. Dammit! Where would she go?”
“To look for Paige.” Franco thought for a moment. “Head into downtown.”
“You got an idea?”
“Something like an idea. More like a hunch. Until I can pick up on her, we just have to go with it.” Franco tossed a glance into the backseat, watched Paige breathing in shallow gasps. “She’s got to get away from all of this. If there is any hope for her, it has to be done soon.”
“Yes. I agree. So why down town? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking the last place the police found a body, the last place the Killer would have had a victim. The Warehouse District, Doland Street.”
***
It was fully dark now, and the city lights were iridescent in the distance, like a fantastical mirage. I crossed the city, the suburbs, winding my way up Hwy 3 toward the warehouse districts. The idea had crossed my mind, that maybe if I could get to the last crime scene, the last place the killer played out one of his gruesome scenes, I could get a feed on him. Maybe.
I felt the tugging again, and I scratched at the back of my head.
Out!
Nothing. No response. I wondered if I was facilitating this maniac with my own paranoia. I also wondered if it wise that I think at all. It was plausible that any thoughts I had were fully transparent to Jimmy Garcia. More than that, it was damn near certain.
I eased my car into a back alley, scrambling in the back of my head to remember the name of the district, or the street the reporters had mentioned. It wasn’t necessary. Twenty yards ahead, yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the light breeze and flapped on the pavement. Pleased that I had found it, I parked quickly, and stayed to the shadows behind the corrugated metal buildings.
Adara, you are barking up the wrong tree my dear.
Really, Jimmy? Because it sure doesn’t feel that way.
Oh you are. You won’t find her there. I know where she is though. And if you play a little game with me, I will show you where she is.
No. You won’t. Your games are over Jimmy.
Would you like to know where your husband is, also? I can offer you that little piece of info for free.
If you so much as touch a hair on his he-
Don’t be stupid Adara. He is more gifted than you and I, only he is controlled. He can’t do a thing with it. He just watches and believes that he protects the powerful ones. Like you. Once, like me.
What are you saying? Franco is, is like me? He protects me? From what?
Why, from ourselves. Don’t you see? There is a hierarchy of the Gifted and someone has to watch those who don’t use or understand their abilities. That’s Franco. And Methra, to an extent, though she is weaker than most.
Why should I believe you?
You don’t have a choice. Here’s the game. You watch and I’ll strip away all the cobwebs off of that little corner of your mind that you resist, that you ache to forget. Don’t shut them out, Adara. This is your penance.
**
The smell was back. Stronger than before. I can see down the stairs at the billowing smoke and I can feel the heat radiating from below. The sound of crackling is getting louder, as fire eats the walls of my Grandparents home.
I make my way further down the smoky stairs, coughing and wiping tears that leak from my eyes. My eyes won’t adjust and it’s still so dark, in here and outside that I fear I will fall and the fire will consume me.
I remember my dream, the one just a week ago, the one where it’s dark and the man comes to me and hands me golden keys and shines light into my heart and tells me it will all be okay. I can’t hear him speaking , but I know he is talking to me, to me alone. I feel his hands as they brush against mine, and they are real. I see his eyes, and now I recognize something there, something familiar, something I understand.
This is like my dream, I think. I’m going to be saved. I just need to get to the door.
The front of the house is engulfed. The sound of something gobbling the wood and plaster and metal is deafening, like the mouth of a hungry monster. It roars within the house, and the smoke is blacker down here. Heavier.
I squat and crawl beneath the ceiling of smoke that hangs just a foot above the hard plank floors. I see the opening to the kitchen, the red and orange tails of fire licking at the walls, the table, the stove. I don’t see Grandmother. Or Grandfather.
Keep moving. Keep moving, I tell myself. The back of the house is nearer now, and I have a surge of hope, knowing that just as my vision told me, I would be saved.
I shouldn’t have spoken the dream to Grandfather. I shouldn’t have told anyone. He didn’t believe me. The welts are still belted across my back, the marks of leather and metal still embedded into my small side. Still, nothing compared to last night’s scouring in the bath.
I crawl further still, towards the freedom of the back door, past the coat rack and Grandmothers knitting basket and just past the open door way of my Grandparents bedroom. My eyes are tearing, and although it’s hard to see, I make out the silhouette of them both, holding on to each other, lying in their bed. They are fast asleep, and there is no fire in their room, not yet. But it comes, quickening it’s pace down the hall and eating up the first floor of this old, clapboard house like a cracker in the mouth of a mammoth. It will be no time and the fire will be licking at my heels. I watch their stomachs rise and fall.
Why can’t they hear all of this? Can’t they smell the fire, hear the burning, feel the heat? I watch a moment longer, and I feel the tug of impatience and the sudden cold, hard, hatred that I felt when my chapped skin prickled as I awoke this very morning. I remember the sickness in Grandmother’s eyes last night as she scrubs, and scrubs, and scrubs my body clean of sins I’ve never even thought of, much less committed. I feel the anger swell inside of me again, as I see Grandfather standing in the doorway, pleased, confident. My knees shuffle and I reach the door. I turn the knob and the door swings wide, letting in a gust of cool, dawn air; feeding the fire. I stand and turn, and in one short move, push the door closed and run out into the field.
My breath caught in my lungs as I grasp what I have seen, what I’ve remembered. Jimmy remained somewhere in my mind, but for the moment, he seemed to have taken a backseat, to watch my reactions, perhaps. To revel in them.
Stunned, I turned and spun into the sheet metal wall behind me, sliding down it’s length and crumbling to the pavement.
I did that?
I did.
I remembered now, of course, what I had so long ago, pushed away. There was no savior that early morning, who yanked me out of the doorway and into safety. My mind made that up, transposed it from my dream, so that I wouldn’t remember what I had done.
I killed them. Both of them. I watched them sleep as the house burned like rice paper and I didn’t wake them, I didn’t yell to them, and when I did reach the edge of the field, to relative safety, I watched the house burn to the ground before I ever went for help.
Very good Adara. You are coming into your own aren’t you?
How the **** do you know this? How did you know and I didn’t?
Well, truth be told, you knew all along. You just didn’t want to see it. But I could see it. When I popped into little Paige’s head, in her sessions with Dr. Lipscomb, I could see her with you, feel her with you and once I glimpsed you as she does… Guilty.
She doesn’t know this. She couldn’t possibly.
No, she doesn’t know. But it was the handle I needed to get into you and I did, Adara. I did. You are my climax and my sacrifice. My final act of reckoning.
For my Anita and Marcus, you will suffer. You let two people die, Adara. You have committed the most heinous of all sins.
In my mind, I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t me, of course, Jimmy pulled the strings, but any strength I had drained with the sickening realization of what I’d done, of what Paige would see in me, as her Gift blossomed and strengthened. The images of the bathes,the whips,the beatings and the hatred washed over me. Yet, there were to be no excuses with Jimmy at my helm. He was the Puppeteer, I the puppet.
With him in my mind, working swiftly and deftly, he grabbed a jagged hunk of rusted metal that lay inches from my limp body. I watched my own hand claw at the weapon, watched my own fingers sink into his shape. His mind melded into my own, and in him, I saw the visions he fought; the dark haired woman and her son, the fire that he couldn’t stop, the smell of flesh as the firefighters jerked him from the apartment. I felt his hatred and I felt my own. The emotions were too much for me alone. My eyes, clear and blue clouded with the hazy brown of Jimmy Silent Garcia and together we etched the curse, my curse, into my forearm. If there was pain, I didn’t feel it. I only felt Jimmy and his weight, his consciousness. He punctuated his sentence upon my body and grafted the words that would follow me to darkness, into my skin, not to be erased.
Thou Shalt Not Kill.
Two hundred yards away, tires screeched and exhaust plumed into the night air. The doors flew open and two figures bolted out and across the pavement, to the silent, bleeding woman who lay slumped against the shadows.
***
Paige’s cell phone rang. It was Franco, his picture i.d. lighting in the center of her screen.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing much, just checking on you…? I know it’s your big day. Just wanted to let you know that I’m with you. I’m always with you.”
“I know Dad. Don’t worry. Your like my guardian angel or something! Lighten up! It’s a test I can pass in my sleep. And just think! One more day and then I’m officially a college grad. I’ll have a career and a new car and maybe a new condo downtow-”
“Whoa! Slow down, missy. You have to pass the test first. Then apply for a job, which by the way, I hear there is a shortage of fantastic and smart psychologists in this town. Then we can talk about Condo’s and cars…okay?”
“Okay.” Paige paused in front of the door way to the proctored exam room. “I’ve gotta go, but I’ll call you as soon as I’m finished.”
“Sure. Oh, and I’ll be going by to visit your mother at Sunny Dale. You know her E.E.G.’s showed marked improvement this last round. There are new testing regimens her doctors want to experiment with, but maybe…maybe one of these will help.”
“Maybe so, Dad. Maybe so. Tell her I love her. Even if she can’t hear me.”
