The Ethereal Vision Page 6

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  A week after the accident, Nora heard Jane wake in the night and go downstairs. She looked to Tom, so far on the other side of the bed, he was inches from falling off the edge. He was lying with the side of his face flat against the pillow and one arm dangled over the side. She got up and followed Jane down the dimly lit hallway. She walked past the mirror there, and in the dim light she could tell that she had lost weight.

  Her silk nightgown trailed around her, and her long black hair came down past her shoulders. The shadows that fell across her angular features revealed her sunken cheeks, and drops of blood poured from a reopened gash on the right side of her face. She had no recollection of receiving it. She reached up and wiped the minute trace of fresh blood away. She placed her thumb in her mouth, cleaning off the droplet. The metallic aura consumed her sense of taste and smell. She felt a moment of shame that she didn’t understand and wrapped her nightgown around her tightly.

  She reached the staircase of their small house and looked up for a moment, noticing that it somehow felt larger now. The ceilings seemed to stretch into infinity, and the rain that shadowed the walls seemed to be falling from another world. She put her hand on the staircase for a moment, fearing that she was about to lose her balance, and took a deep breath.

  Stop, Nora! a fierce voice said from inside her. And she did physically stop on top of the staircase. She gritted her teeth and looked up through the skylight. There’s no time for this. Jane needs you. The shadows of rain trailed down her dry cheeks for a second more before she turned and descended the stairs, denying the traces of trauma that still lingered from the accident.

  She entered the kitchen and found Jane attempting to make chocolate milk for herself.

  When Jane saw her, she said, “I couldn’t sleep anymore.”

  Nora smiled at her. She allowed herself to believe for a second that everything was fine, and that their world was perfectly normal. In this fantasy scenario, Jane was just a typical, if not precocious, child who couldn’t sleep.

  “That’s okay. Why don’t you go inside and put on a film? I’ll make this for you, and we can watch it together.”

  Jane’s eyes lit up. “Really?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure kiddo. You go pick the movie and I’ll be there in a moment.” She watched as Jane left the room with a smile on her face. It was three o’clock in the morning. Nora proceeded to heat the milk, then reached for the chocolate mix. She heard the television come on and the channels change as Jane selected a film to watch.

  As the milk heated, thoughts about Tom teetered on the outskirts of her mind, wanting to enter. In the mere week since the accident, he had drifted even further from her—from them—in a jarring, rapid fashion. She stared into the milk as steam rose off the surface, trying not to think about what that meant for her future.

  She entered the living room a few moments later to find Jane sitting on the sofa with her legs stretched in front of her. Nora placed the cocoa on the coffee table in front of them and warned her daughter that it was hot and to be careful. Nora sat next to Jane and put her feet up beside her daughter’s. Jane had selected A Bug’s Life, and Nora’s mind began to drift again as the colourful film began. She remembered it as an older animated film, and she noticed the difference in graphical quality immediately. She was about to ask her daughter why she had chosen such an aged film, but decided against it.

  She wasn’t allowed to think of Tom and the fact that he seemed to be drifting even farther away from them since the accident. She tried concentrating on the film instead. Her neck still hurt from where the bolt of force from her daughter’s mind had impacted it; her hand now found its way to that place instinctively and massaged it. In this way, her mind was yet again automatically drawn back to the incident.

  Jane had saved them. If it hadn’t been for her daughter’s ability to command this unknown energy, all three of them would have died. But it had devastated her. Nora could only wonder at the prospect that Jane may have been dealt permanent damage by stopping their car the way she had. Nora could only desperately hope that Jane had not. There were other things to be concerned about, too.

  The tone of the interviews with so-called experts on the matter was becoming increasingly contentious. One man, in an interview she did not want to remember, had suggested that this emerging group of people who seemed to have supernormal faculties should not be allowed to enter society at all. He had argued that they would not be able to function as members of society on a normal basis. This had been a segment from an Irish news station. The tone of the arguments on the international and North American channels was even more combative.

  There were others, thankfully, who heralded the arrival of these young people as an indication of some kind of transcendence of the human spirit. As one man had put it, it was the beginning of the final adjustment of mankind to the cosmos, the end of history. He had said that these people should be protected, not persecuted, chased or demonized. In fact, he had made it quite clear that there was no other moment in human history wherein the actions of mankind were of such tremendous import and grandeur.

  These words echoed inside Nora’s mind as she sipped the cocoa and pretended to watch the film. She was under no illusions about her role in things if the latter was the case. If Jane’s ability was symptomatic of some forthcoming transcendent event, her role in it would be minimal. She felt a small pang of sadness at this thought, but pushed it aside; it was of minimal importance to her.

  Jane called her mind back when she looked up at Nora and asked ponderously, “Are you watching, Mom?”

  “Of course,” she replied, lying.

  A moment of silence came over them as Nora really did try to watch some of the film. She breathed deeply and sipped the cocoa. She could sense that her daughter was waiting to say something else. After a few minutes Jane finally spoke again.

  “Mom?” she asked in a gentle voice.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a man in my dreams,” she said simply.

  Nora felt her heart rate quicken immediately. “Really? she asked, as calmly as she could, but still, she heard her voice croak slightly. “What about him?”

  “He’s a tall man. He wears a black coat and he calls himself Max. Or maybe I call him Max. I don’t remember.”

  “Does he talk to you?”

  “Yes. He helped me move the stones in the pond so I could cross it. He was sitting on a bench across the water reading a book, and he asked me to come and sit with him.”

  “So did you do it? Did you move the stones?” Nora asked, in as casual a tone as she could.

  “Yes. I crossed the water and then we went walking in the park.”

  “What was it like?” Nora hoped the slight cracking of her voice was not evident to her daughter as she listened to her 7-year-old child tell her about this figment. But figment was not the word that entered her mind. The word echoing around her consciousness was spectre.

  “It was amazing, Mom. The leaves were so many different colors. Like brown in the autumn, but not brown, like another colour. It was like another…” Jane said, then hesitated.

  “Like another world?” Nora said. She hadn’t planned to say anything, but found herself continuing Jane’s thought reflexively.

  “Yes!” her daughter exclaimed.

  “And then what happened?”

  “He told me things.” Jane paused for a moment. “He said, ‘We’ve been detected.’”

  Nora shivered, and she felt as though her body temperature had dropped by ten degrees. Whatever this apparition was, she knew instantly that it or he—whoever it or he was—was correct. She felt it. She knew it. A flood of images and memories went through her mind: a collage of news reports and articles discussing the growing number of incidents regarding incredible superhuman feats. She realised that she had anticipated this, if only on a less-than-conscious level; somebody had found a way to detect these manifestations, and who knew what they were planning to do?

/>   “He said that when we had the accident with the car they detected it, and they’re sending people after us.”

  “Who, Jane? Who is ‘they’?” Nora asked, trying to mask the growing concern in her voice, but mostly failing.

  “I don’t know…men.”

  Nora composed herself as best she could, even though she was now in a state of high alert. She looked into her daughter’s eyes. “Okay. What else did he say, Jane?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try, Jane…please.”

  Her daughter looked to the side for a moment, thinking. Her brow furrowed. “He did say some other things.” She seemed to be concentrating fiercely, trying to remember. “He said I have to make sure I can handle them. I have to…practice. He showed me how to hide it—you know, when I move things, Mom?”

  Nora looked into her daughter’s eyes. “Yes,” she replied, hiding any concerns she felt as her daughter so casually brought up the subject.

  “He was showing me how to do it—how to concentrate so they wouldn’t know that I could do it, because they’re going to test me, I think.”

  Nora thought about running immediately, but Jane spoke again, nodding her head as though reading her mind.

  “He said we won’t be able to get away from them. He said they’ll find us too easily.”

  Damn, Nora thought. “Okay. So these people…when are they coming?”

  “In a few days, I think.”

  “What do they want?”

  “They want to know about me. Maybe they want to take me with them. I’m not sure.”

  Nora tried not to let her face betray her sinking heart as she heard these words. “What do we have to do?” she asked.

  “Nothing really. He just wants me to…I mean, when they come, he said I have to concentrate so that I can hide it from them, and he showed me how to do it.”

  “Can you do it? Can you do it the way he showed you?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good girl.” Nora put her arm around Jane again and felt mildly elated. She suddenly felt supported in a way she hadn’t been for quite a long time. She thought that strange, as Jane had only been referring to a dream. Still, something inside told her that there was more to it than that. She briefly wondered whether Jane had created this image of the man herself, subconsciously, as some kind of response to the trauma of the accident. But that idea didn’t sit right with her at all. No. Whoever this man was, he had some existence of his own somewhere.

  A Bug’s Life was still playing in front of her. They had missed a portion of it, but Nora was only remotely aware of her surroundings. She sipped her cocoa as her daughter did and made considerable effort to keep the cup from shaking as she lifted it to her lips and placed it back on the table. Jane’s words came back to her: We’ve been detected.

  Somehow, she found rational thought again. Well, at least we know it’s coming. That’s the important thing. She said the name to herself. Max. Then she said it again. She felt something click inside her as she said the name in her mind. Whatever this apparition in her daughter's dream had been, she silently thanked him. She felt as though the bubble they had been living in had finally burst. It was almost a relief.