by China, Max
He didn't need to be told he was in the presence of The Sister, she held out a silken-gloved hand, and he took it. She led him down the crooked hall into an oak-beamed drawing room, where hand-carved linen-fold oak panelling extended halfway up the walls. The small windowpanes broke up the light and threw corners and recesses into shadow and cast shapes across the swirling autumnal patterned carpet.
She motioned for him to sit down at a small round table. There were two chairs; she took the one opposite.
Some of Ryan's reverence for her had rubbed off on him and he felt in awe of her.
She had avoided eye contact until they were seated, but now settled them on him. Calm, green and all seeing, she held his attention easily. Her face oval, with skin smooth and pale as alabaster, she exuded warmth. Miller couldn't detect a single age line in her complexion; her hair was devoid of grey. If Rosetta were twenty-five years old, The Sister would have to be at least in her early forties, based on the assumption that, as a good catholic girl, she was of consenting age when she became pregnant.
"Finished?" A curious smile played on her lips.
There could be no secrets in the presence of The Sister. What Ryan had said was true.
"Don't be afraid. There's no need. I've been waiting for you a long time," she shifted her gaze to watch the approach of Rosetta, who brought them tea. She placed his cup on a saucer in front of him. Tiny swirls of steamy mist converged from the edge of the cup into the centre, where rising up it formed an ethereal spire of vapour. The scent found its way into his nostrils. Lemon tea.
"I haven't had a cup of that type of tea since my grandfather died," he said wistfully.
"You miss him, don't you?" Her voice was warm, a lilting Irish brogue, soft as the summer drizzle he'd felt when they put his grandfather in the ground, buried with the two ounces of Polish soil he'd carried with him everywhere, so he never felt far from home.
He nodded slowly.
"Every one of us has a purpose in this life; it's like a rope. It pulls us through and binds us all together as we head along its length. We are the fibres that twist, turn and eventually break away. Some of us meet along the way, our strands entwine, and we share the journey, sometimes for a long time. Some will twist away around the bend and never meet with the other again. I see all these things, and it hurts me to sit on my hands, to have to watch it go by as it will. I can't interfere, not directly.
"I know how it feels, when a wildlife cameraman is compelled to watch while nature take its course, knowing he so easily could have rescued the calf which is about to be devoured. It's why I had to wait for you to come to me. I first spied you out in a vision I had many years ago, our strands touched for the first time. Did you feel it? Your grandfather did, but he was weakened, and not long for this world . . .
"I tried to link with you many times, but wanting to forget what you saw, you switched yourself off. You were in denial. In truth, you couldn't know, you were too young. It's only right you should come now, when you're ready. We are all born, and we all die eventually. Those things are facts. We cannot change the end, but we can change the journey, not go to our fate in a straight line, go round the houses a little bit, and enjoy the view."
She took a breath; he hadn't noticed her breathing before.
"We don't always see our purpose from the ground, wrapped up as we are in the struggle … to just keep going. When we are in the rope, in the coils, it's as if we are going round and round, going nowhere. When we start our ascent, we might see it if we look back and have the where-with-all to figure it out. Everyone has a part to play; they may not see it right now. They may never see it. Many don't make sense of it until their last days. Some will see it just as the light fades from their eyes. There are others, like you, blessed with second chances, a third or even more, given a chance to grow. There have been, and there will be times, when you can make no sense of any of it, but you were made to be strong, as were we all. You must find your strength.
"The course of your life changed years ago, and it's taken all this time to find your way back. You have a lot of catching up to do. It is why coincidence grows around you every day, why synchronicity dogs your footsteps. Part of you always knew. Your grandfather knew. Why do you think he taught you the things he did? You are slowly remembering. It is why you chose your profession. It is why you dream the way you do. You are coming out of the coils, ascending the rope toward your destiny."
Miller took a sip of his tea. It tasted exactly as his grandfather used to make it.
"Can I ask a couple of questions?" He didn't wait for an answer. "You're not just avoiding people that want their palms read without an appointment." Miller scrutinised her face. "You're hiding here, aren't you?"
Her eyes wavered almost imperceptibly as she glanced over his shoulder to Rosetta, who nodded her approval.
"To answer one of your questions, we are not hiding, but we don't want to be found. The Catholic Church has been trying to persuade me for years to return to the fold. I don't need the hassle. And now there are people looking for us, or more particularly, for something they believe we have." She paused, her curious smile deepened. "To answer your other question, Vera is a part of me that is long past, to use that name you'd have to have known me back then. When I was employed by the Church, I was Sister Verity, and when I left them to work for the poor, I became known as The Sister. Just call me Sister, that'll be fine by me."
Lifting his tea to his lips, Miller met her gaze. He hadn't asked the second question . . . he'd only thought it.
For a minute, they sat in silence.
Chapter 134
Stella stood at the side of Ryan's bed as he drifted in and out of consciousness, watching over him. His breathing shallow and low in his abdomen, she had to stare intently to check it was still moving. He looked peaceful. Occasionally, the skin of his eyelids revealed movement beneath, as if his eyes watched something on the big screen of his mind. She wondered what he dreamed about.
Miller had passed on Ryan's wish that he should be left to die. She knew she wouldn't be able to stay and comply with his wishes. She had to go. "Good night, Doctor Ryan," she whispered, and quietly shut the door behind her.
His memories unfurled one after another. In his dream, he couldn't control them, couldn't prevent them rolling out, and all seemed to focus on failure. Could he have done things better? He felt miserable and dejected, just as the whiskey priest made famous by Graham Greene did in his final moments facing the firing squad, knowing with crystal clarity that he could have achieved so much more . . .
What was it all for?
His good eyelid opened with reluctance. He was alone; he thought he caught a whiff of Gracie's perfume.
What was it all for?
His strength ebbing; he scrawled two messages on his pad and then signed them. With nothing else to hand, he placed them in a faded old envelope.
His mood changed. The line between consciousness and dreams blurred. Giddy and light on his feet, he moved, but he wasn't walking; freed from the constraints of friction he travelled fast towards an unknown destination, he was afraid. You know at the end you don't see your whole life flashing by, but if you're lucky, you get to make some sense of it. Bruce Milowski's words from years before flashed into his brain. Although they were advanced for such a young boy, he never gave them a second thought. Here, he paused, and sense came. They weren't the boy's words … they were his grandfather's . . . Satori . . . so this is what it feels like . . . Self-doubt washed away; he bathed in a shimmering and ethereal light. This is it, Ryan, your faith tested, your soul naked . . . A hand slipped through the crook of his arm and hardly daring to hope, he turned. It's Gracie!
She'd come to meet him. Leading him on, she held on tight to his forearm and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I've been waiting for you, Mr Ryan . . ." she said,
Miller continued to drink his tea in small sips, his telephone buzzed from the depths of his pocket.
He retrieved it and glanced at the displa
y. It's Stella.
"I should take this . . ." he said.
"That's okay," she affirmed. "Ryan's dead, by the way."
It took a moment for what she'd said to register.
"Hello, Stella . . ."
"Oh, Miller, it's Ryan. He just died . . ."
He calmed her the best that he could from the end of the telephone, and gave her instructions about what to do, who to call. "No . . . listen… Don't worry. If you need to talk, I'm right here … only a phone call away. I'll be back soon . . . No, I'm not sure, could be tonight, more likely tomorrow, in the afternoon . . . I will. I'll—"
Stella interrupted, blurting out, "I need to see you."
Her words carried an urgency that took him aback. "See me . . . what for?"
"There's something I need to ask you and something I want to tell you . . ."
"Look, Stella, I can't talk now . . ."
"No, not now . . . tomorrow, when you get back. Come round . . ."
"Okay." He couldn't imagine why she wanted to see him. "I'll call you—"
The phone cut off. No signal. He shrugged his shoulders. "I lost the signal . . ." Ryan's words came back to haunt him . . . See if you still have your cynicism, after you've met her. The idea that she might have had something to do with the signal loss entered his head.
"You're here, and you are needed there," she said, an enigmatic smile touching her lips. "She needs your help in more ways than you know."
"Ryan said the same thing . . ."
"That isn't what I am referring to."
"Well, that sounds very mysterious, what do you mean?"
"I see three women in your life; one is no good for you, the other two . . . either would do for you. Miller, you are going to have to choose, and choices can be painful sometimes."
"Sister, what if I choose not to?"
"I'm only telling you what might be . . . What you do about it, is up to you."
A polished black stone slightly larger than a toy marble appeared in her hand. It bent the reflection of the window behind across its spherical surface.
"I want you to hold this for a moment. What it is, I don't rightly know, but it is something unique, a gift from God."
Miller viewed it with suspicion.
"Don't worry," Sister explained. "We can go all round the houses, with me plucking things about you from the air, or we can shortcut things . . ."
"With that?" he asked.
"It's something I found years ago, when I was a wee young girl. It helps me focus on people . . . what they carry inside; it helps me understand what makes them tick. I want you to put your hand out, focus for a minute . . ."
Both stared at the stone.
It was empty when she first found it, readable only after others had touched it. It never occurred to her it wasn't empty. There had just been nothing new to transfer into her. If she'd have been of a remotely scientific disposition, she would have had an inkling of how it worked sooner. She knew she was an aberration. In human terms, she was off the scale, the amplification of her senses out of all proportion to evolutionary needs. She recognised that Miller was mildly psychic, but if he were a dog, she was a bloodhound. Her extra perception covered all the senses, and that gave rise to the existence of something else in her. A sixth sense.
She removed her glove and held the stone in her naked fingers, above his out-turned hand. Her eyes danced. "Are you ready?" she said and dropped the stone into his palm. She closed her eyes.
The weight of it surprised him. His hand dropped a fraction as he compensated for the weight. He was still wondering how such a tiny thing could be so heavy, when he felt something stir. Energy held inside passed through beyond its form and detonated. Miller couldn't have explained the effect in any other way; it started a chain reaction of his senses… A hurricane wind blew right through the depths of him. Tiny particles of shape or form gathered from nothingness to somethingness. The Sister was aware the instant the transference began because what passed into him, transmitted through the airwaves, back to her. Her eyes flew open.
Miller reeled and looked startled as a blur of past events churned through his mind. He had the look of someone who'd seen inside Pandora's Box. Fragments linked; pieces fit. His expression was one of horror.
"Stop!" she commanded, clapping her hands together. "You were not supposed to see. I underestimated you. I should never have allowed you to touch the stone!" She snatched the stone back from him.
"Then why did you?"
"Because I cannot touch you directly, it would be too direct and overwhelming, even painful. The stone does the same thing without the pain."
They sat bemused, and stared at each other.
Finally, Miller spoke, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what is that thing?"
"When I first found it I thought it was a meteorite, now I'm not sure. Whatever it is, I believe it to be a gift from God." She rolled the stone between her thumb and forefinger while he observed. Jet-black and naturally shiny, it was a perfect sphere. What are the odds of it naturally forming that way?
She removed the second glove, and holding the stone clasped in one hand, wrapped the other around it and absorbing what it had taken from him. Consternation crossed her face. "I know you saw the priest."
Unsure of exactly what he'd seen, he nodded. "I saw something," he closed his eyes. He was in a graveyard . . .
"Miller, please put those thoughts from your mind. You were not supposed to see," she moved, her form radiant in the light of the window. He squinted as he searched her face.
"What the hell was that all about?"
"Oh, Miller, how best to tell you?"
A trickle of blood dewed on his nose tip, he wiped it away on the back of his hand. Confused, he grabbed a tissue from his pocket. I never get nosebleeds.
Sister thought rapidly. This was the first time she hadn't known exactly what to do since she became an adult. Some other things . . . Well, she couldn't control everything. In many ways, it reminded her of what happened with Mick when they'd touched . . . when she'd had the image of him falling in front of a train on a railway crossing. She'd seen his death coming, but she didn't know when, where or how, or even that it would actually happen. She could do no more than tell him to be careful.
After that experience, she'd always worn gloves around people. If her mind was Wi-Fi, her skin was hard wire and the stone a medium in between, its transmission by touch similar in principle to plugging a USB stick into a computer. It was a quirk of fate that only certain people could read it. Already she picked up on Miller's latest thoughts. He was thinking the stone was not a meteorite, or a gift from God. No, he was examining the possibility it could be alien technology. God is an Alien?
It never ceased to amaze her how people denied the existence of God, yet readily embraced the possibility of alien life. There was no time to tell him everything. She reached out without warning and touched him.
If the stone had sparked an explosion, her touch was like planets colliding, an atom bomb. All resistance fell before it, scorching his senses; his thoughts flattened like trees as her experiences translated into impressions and came in a blizzard of wind, raining down on him from the Armageddon inside of her. He felt like a man who had tasted the sweet, heady nectar of life for the very first time. It enveloped him, and he wanted more.
Their histories exchanged in a matter of seconds, but this time, she lost all control over what passed. Connections forged between them, which could not be undone.
Echoes of her past mingled with his. The black hole in his memory swallowed them up and regurgitated them as his own, there was no way of knowing if they actually belonged to him. It meant that it would be a long time before he could pick them apart again.
Random voices and images ran through his consciousness.
A garish, modern, neon lit church appeared. A voice followed, "You must find another place to live, or he'll find you!"
Me or her? he asked himself.
"There are many devil
s that walk this earth, and he is one of them. He has many faces."
Pain, sorrow and guilt chained him with unhappiness and held him down; a vision formed of a choirboy sitting on a pew outside a confessional . . . He'd deliberately timed his confession, moving back in the queue three times, so remained the last to go in. How do I know this? A scene from the past played out in his head.
"Bless me father for I have sinned, it's been too long since my last full confession. Since then I've decided you'll not be manipulating me into any more of your vile practices father. I didn't know before… I was only ten years old, but I know it's wrong now."
The priest was calm. "You want to turn your back on all the special privileges your position brings? You no longer want to be in the choir?"
The boy blurted, "I'll not be doing those things anymore. It's against God and nature, and it stops now!"
The priest hissed through the grille, "It stops when I say it stops—"
"No, father it stops now, or I go to the police!"
"Then go to the police, do you think they will take the word of an illegitimate orphan against the word of a priest?"
The boy didn't make it out of the church grounds. The priest murdered him.
Miller saw it all. Head between his knees, he covered his face and then sat up abruptly at the gravelly sound of his grandfather's voice. "Sometimes you find stray thoughts and tune in. Sometimes they are like ghosts in the air. Strong like they were from one hour ago, or yesterday. Only the strong ones mean anything; otherwise they wouldn't be out there."
He was in freefall. Thoughts manifested; scenes unfolded. Not all belonged to him. A man dressed in khaki, a tall girl. Bruce, I told you not to go off! Where are you? Bruce! His mother's voice . . . What is she doing here? Wandering absently, he telescoped skywards … a birds-eye view, looking down. A little boy tripped over, jumping stones. Faces, hidden for years by time and trauma, came back to him. More and more was stacking up; he couldn't process the information fast enough.
