“He’ll get off with just a rap on his knuckles. You know that, right?”
“Not if we get him for murder.”
“Is this about murder?” he asked in surprise.
“According to the one woman who had gone missing but just died in an intersection, the answer to that question is yes.”
“You lost me there,” he said.
“Somebody they hassled earlier may have died, after they went a little too far.”
“May have?”
“Yeah,” she said sadly. “Until I can get a chance to get deeper into this whole mess, it’s a maybe. A warrant would help a hell of a lot. The witness is now dead.”
“I don’t know if I can get that far,” he said. “Nothing you’ve given me is enough to get what you want.”
*
With nothing elseto do, Simon picked up one of his journals, then sat and wrote down everything he could remember about this last set of visions. As he did this, he shook his head. He should have done that every other time as well. When he was done with this latest rendering of his current visions, he would go back and write down what he could remember from the earlier ones. It was the only way to track whatever the hell was happening. To the best of his ability, he noted the dates and times when his senses went crazy and when the whirling rumbling noise interrupted him.
The woman crying really got to him. He couldn’t tell if she was a prisoner or what. He presumed she was blindfolded or in complete darkness because of the shadows, the quiet. However, nothing gave him any sign as to where she was. To make this record was completely defeating in that way, but it helped drain it all from his brain, so he could think again. After a hot shower, as he collapsed down for bed, he whispered to the woman in the darkness, “Calm down, just take it easy. I’m here. I’m not sure how much help I can be, but I’m here.”
Almost a sense of peace filled him, as he reached out to her. Only he got no answer.
He frowned because it seemed there was this wall between them now. He couldn’t see a door to walk through, and, given the hour, he wondered if he even wanted to walk through one anyway. He frowned at that because he generally liked to help the underdog. If she was a victim, he wanted to help her, but was she being held against her will, a prisoner somewhere? Or was she just somebody who was overcome by a bad scenario in her world?
That meant something completely different. Because, if she was just having a bad time, well, he could understand that, and he could send her a virtual hug. Not that he had any clue if that was even possible or not, but it was about how he felt. Trying to help, as he lay here in the darkness, all he could do was close his eyes, trying to remember his grandmother’s lessons, sending waves of comforting energy in the direction of the crying sad woman. He didn’t know why it was so different this time.
With the abused children, Simon had seen visions of them being collected and held captive, yet Simon had only connected with the one child. He thought at the time that maybe it was because the others were dead. He didn’t know about this psychic stuff; it wasn’t his thing, and he had no idea what he was capable of. Unfortunately it was apparently becoming his thing, and that was a whole different story.
When it came to the woman on the bridge, he had probably connected with her because she was so emotionally overwrought. He didn’t really know why that one had connected. It could have been because Simon had felt so bad about his friend David’s suicide. Perhaps it was because he wanted to help, and so he picked up that same suicidal energy of that one woman, which the asshole had been fostering in her, pushing her to do the deed.
But what did any of those jumpers from the bridge have to do with this woman? Who was this crying woman? And why was she so haunted? Not only haunted but so devastated and broken by the life around her? It drove him crazy. He couldn’t seem to help, so what was he supposed to do? That helplessness, that hopeless inability to make a change in one’s own life, which seemed to be happening all around him, was driving him nuts.
Yes, he knew he couldn’t force others to act. Yet he wished he could at least talk to them, get them to open up, maybe see the fallacy in their thinking.
It wasn’t fair; it really wasn’t. What was the point of having a gift like this? People called it a gift, but he thought it a curse, since he couldn’t do anything to change the outcome. As he lay here in the darkness, he heard his grandmother’s voice rolling through him.You can only observe. You cannot change.
He remembered yelling at her back then, hearing this in real time, saying he didn’t want anything to do with it. What was the point of seeing things if you couldn’t affect the outcome? She’d given him a sad smile, saying, “It’s just the way it is.”
“I don’t like it,” he yelled back at her.
She nodded slowly. “In time, you will learn to live with it.”
“No.” He backed up, heading outside to play with his friends. “I’m not going to,” he’d snapped. It was pretty rough just hearing and even observing some of the things his grandmother had gone through. He could do nothing to help her, even as such a young child already with this “gift,” even when growing into a teen with more confirmation of his “gift.” All he could do was avoid these discussions with his grandmother. She never called him back, never told him how to help those in the visions, or what he could do to stop anything like that from filling his mind.
Now he wished that he had stuck around and had had her take him under her wing, tutoring him in the ways of this craziness. At one point in time, she had just given him a sad smile. “You will find your way. No one can help you, but you will find your way.”
He had to wonder if that was even possible. Sitting in this craziness and listening to a woman gently sob, he couldn’t even find out the reason for it. He reached across the divide and whispered to her, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
But there was no answer.
He wasn’t even sure that she heard him. It was quite possible that her earlier response was to something completely different. How egotistical of him to think that it was a reply to his question, but, given the circumstances, he hadn’t known how else to deal with it.
Frustrated and almost on the verge of anger again, he lay here quietly in the darkness and listened to her sob. When she finally stopped and fell asleep, he followed her into dreamland, wishing with all his might that this could go away and never come back.
Chapter 14