Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  Clearwater gave me a moment to get control of myself, and then said, “If you’d let me finish. I was going to say that I cannot alter the wards to let the ghost in; it would break the sanctity of the circle and then we would not be able to continue again until the morning.”

  She sounded like a schoolteacher talking to an errant child. It worked, too; I was suddenly ashamed of my outburst.

  “Besides, you don’t need your pet gho … um … Whisper, to see what I’m seeing.”

  “I don’t?”

  Another sigh. “You really are new at this, aren’t you, Hunt?”

  I decided that didn’t need an answer.

  “If you can borrow the eyes of the dead,” she went on, “you certainly shouldn’t have any trouble doing the same with the living.”

  Her comment stopped me in my tracks and left me speechless.

  Borrow the eyes of the living?

  I didn’t know I could do that; had never even considered doing it, actually. I suddenly wondered what else I didn’t know. What Clearwater might be able to teach me.

  This was turning into quite an interesting night.

  She explained the process, telling me that the ability was already there, as evidenced by the times I’d linked with Whisper; I just needed to learn to use it in a different way.

  Apparently it was all about belief. She lost me a bit explaining how the consensual belief in the present reality paradigm generated the world that we all exist in, how that reality could be bent and shaped by those whose willpower was stronger than the willpower of those around them, but I got the general gist of it and was ready to give it a try.

  “Concentrate on visualizing the end result,” she said. “See yourself ‘borrowing’ my sight, seeing through my eyes.”

  I did as she asked.

  I imagined looking around the kitchen, seeing it as if for the first time, but nothing happened.

  “You have to give it more. You have to believe. Forget what you know, that your eyes no longer work the way they used to. Imagine them working in a new and different way, just as they do when you borrow the eyes of the ghosts around you.”

  I tried again.

  I put everything I had into it, straining my mental faculties to do just as she asked. I wanted more than anything to see what that mirror had to show me. I don’t think I’d wished that hard since the days I’d believed in Santa Claus and maybe not even then.

  Perhaps that was my problem. My desire was so strong that it apparently messed up whatever connection Clearwater expected me to generate, for I remained firmly ensconced in darkness.

  “Nothing?”

  I shook my head.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she said softly, more to herself than to me. If my hearing hadn’t been so acute I probably would have missed it altogether. “You should be able to do this.”

  She wasn’t ready to give up, not just yet.

  “Here, take my hand,” and, without waiting for me to do so, she reached out and grabbed one of mine where it rested on the tabletop.

  It was like striking a match; the minute our hands came in contact, whatever spark was needed to jump-start the connection arced between us and light flooded my senses. I found myself sitting at the table, staring back at my own face from the seat opposite, and my stomach did a half gainer before I got it back under control.

  “Are you all right, Hunt?”

  I nodded.

  Then, realizing that by borrowing her sight I’d left her blind in my stead, I said it aloud. “Yes, I’m okay. You?”

  “I’ll deal with it for now,” she replied, her voice shaking slightly, but she squeezed my hand as she said it, which I took as a good sign.

  I could see again.

  Son of a bitch! I could see again!

  I sat there, numb with amazement. Clearwater’s sight must have been better than mine ever had been, for everything came through with a clarity that I’d never experienced before. And unlike the times I’d borrowed Whisper’s sight, with its odd perspectives and accompanying flashes of emotions pouring off of every object, the view from Clearwater’s eyes was perfectly normal.

  I glanced around the kitchen, taking it all in. It was a comfortable room, cluttered in a lived-in way, with pots hanging above the stove in haphazard order and a few unwashed dishes sitting on the counter by the sink.

  I didn’t care; it was gorgeous, the best kitchen I’d ever seen.

  “Thank you,” I managed to get out, through a throat clenched tight.

  “My pleasure,” she replied, and the warmth in her voice told me she meant it.

  Now came the hard part. I was going to have to be her eyes. She was going to conduct the scrying ritual just as she had before, but this time I was going to be the one letting her know what it was showing us. She gave me a moment to collect myself, and then we both turned our attention to the mirror on the table in front of us.

  The wards were already up, the scrying mirror already prepped and available, so when she bent her head over it she was able to get a response much quicker than the first time. As I watched, the surface of the mirror darkened and then began to churn, sending little waves outward from the center just as she’d explained earlier.

  I could feel her excitement growing, not just physically but mentally as well, as some of her emotions leaked across the link that mystically bound us together. Her thoughts were there as well, faint itches at the edges of my consciousness, like ants crawling across the surface of my skin. I couldn’t understand them; I was simply aware of their presence.

  I could see the mirror’s surface start to smooth out. “We’re getting something,” I told her, and then a scene fell into place before us.

  Elizabeth sat on the floor of a room somewhere, playing with a doll I didn’t recognize. The room itself was unfamiliar as well, with cinder-block walls painted a drab cream color. It was a bedroom, as evidenced by the institutional-looking bed with its thin mattress and iron frame, so different from the canopied cherrywood bed that Anne and I had bought her for her sixth birthday.

  My pulse was pounding, and I thought my heart might climb right up and out of my chest. My grip on Clearwater’s hand grew tighter; I didn’t want to take a chance that we might accidentally sever the connection between us.

  I was looking at my little girl.

  Alive and unharmed!

  Then reality asserted itself as I realized that the Elizabeth I was looking at was no different physically from the Elizabeth who had disappeared from my home five years before.

  Five years and she hasn’t changed? That can’t be right.

  I said as much to Clearwater.

  “Unfortunately, that’s one of the problems with this kind of clairvoyance. The images we see can be from the present or the past and we don’t always have as much control over that as we’d like.”

  She explained that she would try to focus in on Elizabeth’s current location now that I’d confirmed we’d latched onto the right arcane signature.

  I could feel her release more energy into her link with the mirror and for a moment it seemed to respond. A new image began to form, hazy at first and then with more clarity. I watched as part of a building began to come into view; I could see a tall iron spire, maybe a weathervane or something similar, and the textured surface of what appeared to be a tiled roof.

  The image was growing, spreading across the surface of the mirror, and I found myself silently urging it on as I realized that the mirror might just be showing us where Elizabeth was currently being held.

  More of the setting appeared. It was definitely a building, a large one at that, with what appeared to be multiple wings. A mansion, a hospital, something like that, I thought, but I still couldn’t see it clearly.

  “Can we get it to focus any better?” I asked in a whisper, not wanting to break her concentration too much but unable to resist asking.

  She grunted, a noncommittal acknowledgment that she’d heard me, and seconds later the image began to
shift into focus, slowly becoming clearer and more visible.

  Abruptly, there was a third presence in the link with us.

  It was completely unexpected, an unwanted and alien presence, something that just didn’t belong. The connection between Clearwater and me had felt smooth and natural; this one brought with it a sense of pain and anguish. And as each second passed the pain grew worse.

  I could feel Clearwater’s astonishment alongside my own, could feel her growing concern as she sought to isolate us from whatever it was that was now staring back at us from the location we had linked to in the mirror before us. Whoever or whatever it was, it was strong; there was no doubt about that. I could feel its anger, could sense its rage at our trying to focus in on its hiding place, and, with the strength of a hammer blow, that rage poured back at us from the other side, slamming into us, disrupting our thoughts, blurring our senses of self as we were lost together in the feedback of that attack.

  In the midst of it all I felt my hand slip from hers, but the link between us did not break. The newcomer was apparently holding the link open as it sought to locate us just as we had done the same in reverse.

  Clearwater fought to protect us, to pull us free from the assault, and in the process something about the link between us changed.

  I’d been dimly aware of her thoughts and emotions at the edge of our link, but it had been like skimming the surface of some vast ocean. Everything had seemed so far away, so distant. Nothing had been clear. Nothing had been in focus. But now I was suddenly immersed, the surface giving way and plunging me deep into the depths, battering me from all sides like a ship lost in a storm. I grew dizzy from all the emotions: pity and pain, fear and curiosity, wonder and shock. I could sense her horror at the loss I had endured with Elizabeth’s disappearance, her amazement at my unwillingness to let her go even after all this time, and, perhaps most surprising, her attraction toward me despite it all.

  It was heady stuff, coming on the heels of the glimpse we’d caught of Elizabeth and of my being able to see normally again after so much time in my own personal darkness. Emotion flooded through me, like the raging waters that pour forth from a shattered dam. Her attraction coursed through my veins, the incredible intimacy of the moment transposing itself into sudden desire stronger than any I had ever known. She tried to pull back from the table, but I caught her arm and drew her bodily toward me, bending my head for a kiss, all thought of the invading presence now forgotten in the flood of endorphins and emotional bliss.

  The slap caught me totally off guard, never expecting that kind of response given what I’d just caught churning through the depths of her mind. My head rocked back from the blow … and my thoughts cleared.

  In that instant I understood that whatever was in the link with us was feeding the feeling, trying to overwhelm us with emotion as it stole deeper and deeper into our heads.

  The kitchen was spinning before me as I stumbled away from the table, fighting to retain my sense of self. The pressure and pain in my head was overwhelming. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Clearwater holding on to the edge of the table as if for dear life while her other hand danced across the tabletop, searching for something she couldn’t see.

  Just as I thought we were finished, that whatever it was in the link with us was going to overwhelm us completely, her hands found what they were after—the mirror. She picked it up and smashed it down on the tabletop.

  The link shattered instantly, followed a heartbeat later by the crack of the glass itself as the surface of the mirror returned to normal and reacted to the blow it had just been dealt.

  My ability to see vanished, as did the horrible pressure in my head.

  I could hear myself gasping, something I hadn’t known I was doing, and over by the table I could hear Clearwater saying, “No, no, no,” over and over again to herself.

  I let myself slump to the floor and fought to catch my breath.

  After what seemed like forever, I heard her approach and felt her hand on my arm.

  “Hunt?” She tried to go on, but her voice seemed to fail her.

  I answered the unspoken question anyway. “I’m okay. How are you doing?”

  Her laugh was shaky, but at least it was a laugh. “Remind me never to offer to help you again, okay?”

  I chuckled along with her, but what I really wanted to do was scream. We had been so close!

  Suddenly I had to get out of there.

  I didn’t say a word about what had passed between us, though whether out of concern for her feelings or just simple cowardice, I don’t know. Instead I thanked her for her help, found my way down the hall through a combination of touch and memory, and let myself out the front door.

  27

  THEN

  The world turned and time continued to pass, without a single clue as to what had happened to Elizabeth. That didn’t stop me from continuing my efforts to find her. I tried it all, too. I printed up fliers by the tens of thousands and handed them out wherever I went. I hired private investigators to follow up on any lead that surfaced, no matter how small. I worked the telephone like crazy, consulting experts in law enforcement, child abduction, and kidnapping, searching for some new method or procedure that hadn’t yet been tried. I went on local cable shows and pleaded my case, asking for the safe return of my daughter. Radio show after radio show followed, as I tried to reach as many people as possible. I even paid for my own television commercials carrying the same message. Someone, somewhere, had to have seen her or those who had taken her.

  When conventional approaches failed to produce results, I turned to more esoteric methods. Anything that had the slightest chance of success was fair game. I called every church in the phone book, asking to be put on their prayer list, and did the same thing with every synagogue and mosque as well. I consulted fortune tellers and card readers, hoping to turn up a clue to what had happened to Elizabeth. I had myself hypnotized on several occasions, thinking that my subconscious might hold the key, might contain that little piece of information that would send us down the right path. Dowsers. Psychics. Remote viewers. Voodoo hougans. Santeria priestesses. UFO-abductee groups. I even had tattoos of mystical symbols inked across my body.

  You name it, I tried it.

  None of it worked.

  By the time I met the Preacher, I was primed for what happened next.

  It was a chilly November afternoon. The sun was hidden by a thick blanket of slate gray clouds that pressed down from above, like the weight of the entire world hanging above my head, and the screen door smacked loudly in its frame as it slammed shut behind me.

  I’d just come from a meeting of local psychics who, it turned out, were about as authentically precognitive as a slab of granite, and disappointment burned like a bonfire in my heart. I had been so sure, so convinced that these were the people who were finally going to give me that lead I was looking for, the one solid piece of evidence that could help me discover what had happened to Elizabeth.

  Instead, they’d tried to cheat me out of what little money I had left.

  I might have been obsessed, but I wasn’t an idiot. I left one of them lying on the floor with a bloody nose as payment for my trouble and got out of there as quickly as I could.

  Heading down the street toward my car, I glanced at my watch. It was just after 4:00 p.m. The Atlantic Paranormal Society was hosting a guy at the local union hall in Quincy who was supposed to be a world-renowned dowser. If I hurried, I could catch the last part of his talk and see if I could hire him to find Elizabeth.

  There was a small park at the end of the street. I’d parked on the opposite side, unable to find anything closer, and with time at a premium I cut across the grass rather than walking all the way around.

  That decision changed my life.

  The Preacher stood atop an old wooden crate in the middle of the park, shouting out his message. His arms were outstretched, his palms extended up toward heaven, his head thrown back as if to catch whatever faint
vestiges of sunlight might sneak through the clouds. His raspy voice echoed in the still air.

  “Repent, for the end is near! The horsemen shall ride and blood shall flow in their wake. Confess your sins and receive salvation before it is too late!” His clothing was an assortment of obvious castoffs, some too small, some several sizes too large, and his long, matted hair was partially obscured by a grimy baseball cap. A shopping cart full of plastic garbage bags bursting with discarded junk stood a few feet away.

  I didn’t need some religious rabble-rouser getting on my nerves, so I gave him a wide berth as I continued on my way. I was annoyed enough as it was already.

  I’d walked only a few feet farther when …

  “I can help you find her, you know.”

  The phrase was spoken so matter-of-factly that at first I wasn’t certain I’d heard him correctly. My steps slowed, then they stopped altogether as I tried to puzzle it out.

  Into the silence the voice came again, and this time there was no mistaking what was said. “I can help you find her.”

  I turned, looked back.

  The man now stood upright, his arms at his sides. His face was angled away from me, still looking upward at the setting sun, and the falling waves of his hair kept his features obscured, but somehow I knew he was talking to me.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Your daughter. I can help you find her.” As he spoke, the Preacher slowly turned to look at me, revealing two empty sockets where his eyes should have been. The edges of the pits were raw and inflamed, as if their former occupants had been ripped free from their moorings and tossed aside, forgotten. Those empty sockets stared at me with furious accusation.

  The sensation of being seen, being watched, by that ruined face sent chills racing through my body. Trapped by his eyeless gaze, I suddenly had a hard time finding my voice. When I did, it came out weak and uneven. “What do you know about my daughter?” I stammered.

  The Preacher jumped down from his perch and moved forward without hesitation. He crossed the distance between us unerringly, without a single misstep, until just a few feet stood between us. A wave of bitter cold traveled before him, an arctic wind stolen from the depths of the north, and I was suddenly enveloped in its hoary clutches. I felt dizzy, overwhelmed, as if the cold was affecting my thoughts, numbing my capacity to think. As if from a distance, the other’s voice reached my ears faintly, hollowly. “I know she’s missing. And I know you can find her, if you have the courage. If you care enough about her to do what must be done.”