Salem's Sight

by Lyn Stanzione

  We started walking again, but at a slower pace so we’d have more time to talk before hitting the intersection where Berkley and I would head in different directions. “Other than the fact I share a room with my dead grandmother and seem to dream of the future, no, there’s nothing else.” But just so she’d understand, I filled her in on my dream of flames.

  The wind kicked up and Berkley zipped up her hooded sweatshirt. “So if the fire is the only thing you have to go on, how do you know this is for real? Maybe it’s just some kind of coincidence.”

  I gaped at her wondering where she hid the friend who believed in me. “Well, let’s start with they are rather strange dreams and then it ended up on the news. I mean, it wasn’t like the everyday dream and I just had a feeling in my gut. I’m not sure how, but I knew it as certainly as I knew my own name.” I took a few sips of my own soda and waited for a response.

  Unfortunately for me, she was taking her time. Berkley twisted her hair and tucked it beneath her hood, which now framed her face. She mulled it over for a few more seconds. “I was just playing Devil’s Advocate. Obviously this is much too much of a coincidence. But do you really think you’re psychic or is your grandmother just sending you the images from the other side?”

  Okay, had to admit I hadn’t thought about that possibility. “I don’t know. Why would she show me those specific images though? It’s not like I could have done anything to prevent it or to save that man. I’d understand it if I knew him, but he was a total stranger.”

  We were silent for a few more seconds. “Internet the sec we get home. You check prophetic dreams and I’ll see what I can find out about ghosts sending information and we’ll discuss the highlights later,” she said as we approached the street where we had to split up.

  “Yeah, I’ll call you before supper.” With that we waved and paced off in our separate directions.

  ****

  Come five o’clock Mom and I were pretty much in the same position that we were in the night before, except I was paying close attention to the news this time. And this time I was only pretending to do my homework. I sat on what was normally a comfortable chair, yet I couldn’t control the urge to fidget. My tense muscles ached while I waited impatiently for the inevitable to occur.

  To be honest I was praying I’d be wrong and there’d be no body. I begged and begged, please just let it be some freaky kind of coincidence.

  Yeah, like I really believed that.

  The anchorman once again showed clips of the devastation from the chemical fire the night before and discussed possible causes. Yada, yada, yada still under investigation. There was one new development though… oh crap, here it comes. No, no, no, no… - It appeared the charred remains of a body was found near the entrance of the building.

  Yup, I could have told them that. So much for breaking news. Evidently the poor bugger made a valiant effort to get out, but was overcome by smoke inhalation first. Not what I wanted to hear.

  I was close to soiling my pants, but couldn’t lose the opportunity to ‘I told you so’ my mother. I looked back to her and raised an eyebrow. She looked ashen and her glass was hanging upside down while her diet caffeine free soda spilled out all over the new plush carpet.

  I went to the kitchen and ran a cloth under cold water and grabbed the Resolve spot remover. I started dabbing it up before it stained and my mother was still just sitting there like some sort of zombie when I came back.

  “Believe me now?” I asked wanting to rub it in just a little bit.

  She nodded mindlessly. “It isn’t that I didn’t believe you before. It’s just I hoped you were wrong. I really hoped that you were wrong. And with all the trauma you’ve suffered lately. Well, you can see how it would be easy to think… Oh, hell, I just didn’t want it to be true, but I should have known right away. Should have recognized the symptoms.” She sighed and massaged her temples the exact way I do when my head hurts.

  I didn’t get it. How would she have guessed and what was so wrong with being psychic? Okay, forget the last thought. “What do you mean? How would you know anything about this?” She’d spent the past few days telling me I was imagining things and now that I had proof I wasn’t, she was acting like she knew more about it than I did.

  “This gift you have, well it seems to have skipped a generation. Who knows, maybe I’m just jealous,” she said with a fake half-hearted laugh.

  Oh yeah, knowing what it feels like to burn up in a fire is really something to be jealous of. I mean, really, who wouldn’t want to experience that? Sometimes my mother acts weirder than I do. And makes less sense.

  “Skipped a generation? You mean Grandma?”

  “Yes, my mother, used to have strange dreams sometimes and they would always come true. She hated it because she never had a handle on them. They would never make any sense until the deed was done and then it would all fit together.”

  Anger started to take over. I couldn’t believe my mother had fought so hard the other night, denying the possibility of something she knew was more than likely true. And she had laughed about my grandmother’s dreams before, saying no one really believed in them.

  I felt like one of the cartoon characters that has steam blow out of his as the anger built up. “So it’s hereditary?”

  “I’m not sure what it is. And in your case it seems to be different from Grandma’s. Yours is much more exacting. Hers wasn’t anywhere near as specific.”

  I just stared at her. Big, fat, hairy deal, my dreams were more exacting than Grandma’s. It was still the same. I was actually psychic. Oh holy crap, did I just admit that for real?

  Yup, no matter how I looked at it, I appeared to be psychic.

  That is unless Grandma’s ghost was sending me signals. I mean, she might not have had the psychic thing down when she was on earth. But who knows maybe she had the chance to perfect it on the other side?

  Salem, think about what you’re telling yourself. I couldn’t help it; I’d rather have my dead grandmother imparting information than getting ghost signals and being psychic on top of that. I mean, how weird could I get? That got me thinking, why did all this start when we moved into this house?

  “Mom, why didn’t any of this happen before?” I asked.

  “Why do you think I didn’t put this together? Nothing in the past indicated that you had any talent in that area.” She shook her head. “It can’t be. There would have to have been something.”

  But there wasn’t and I was.

  Tough cookies, Mom.

  Chapter Seven

  I didn’t need this crap right now. Too much was going on, and to be honest, I wasn’t exactly handling it all with finesse.

  But then again there’s no preparation for clairvoyance. It’s not exactly like the flu – tough it out and get over it. It was more like some insidious debilitating disease that took over the body the longer it was around.

  And now this.

  Berkley was waiting for an answer and no words would come out.

  “Earth to Salem. Didn’t you hear me?” She paused for a nanosecond. “We’ll be able to take driver’s ed. Together.” She said it like we’d just won all expense paid tickets to Disney.

  I crossed my arms and my posture answered the question while my mouth remained silent. How do you tell someone what she thinks is great, makes you want to lose your lunch?

  “What’s the matter?”

  Again I thought – hard – and continued to stand like I was made of alabaster.

  “Are you breathing?”

  The question did take me out of my reverie and I took in a little too much air on the next breath.

  “I was kidding. Salem, what is wrong with you? Oh, wow, are you having some kind of vision or something?” The way her eyes rounded she might have been taking in a UFO.

  I thought about it. Lying, that is. Yeah, sure, I’m having a vision of doom and gloom and have to avoid driver’s ed. at all costs. But I couldn’t do it to her so I told the truth. />
  “I don’t want to take driver’s ed. class,” I said casually like I was politely declining a cookie.

  She looked like I just said I was having elective brain surgery. Or maybe she looked more like I needed it. Anyway, it took another minute or so before she shut her mouth, which had been hanging open.

  “You have to take the classes or you can’t get your license.” She said it slowly, succinctly, just in case I’d recently lost a few-hundred brain cells, and my IQ dropped like September temperatures after the sun goes down.

  I nodded and shrugged. Berkley sputtered and tried to collect her thoughts.

  “But everyone wants to get a license. It’s every teen’s dream. It’s not normal to not want to drive.” As if trying to convince me with the conformity issue would work.

  I raised one eyebrow trying to look cool. “And I would be normal in what way?”

  It wasn’t her best argument, but she wasn’t ready to admit defeat. “Point taken. So you’re not exactly like everyone else.” She said it like the differences were minor. “Big deal, your psychic.”

  “It is a big deal for me.” I didn’t know if she was downplaying the psychic thing because she changed her mind and no longer thought it was such a major concern, or if she was just doing it because I was using it in the argument.

  “But it’s a dumb excuse for not wanting a license. I just don’t get it. A license is freedom.”

  Freedom for her and every other kid my age. But not for me. For me it was fear and more frightening than the visions that were taking over my life. I needed to take a stand.

  “I’m not going to change my mind.”

  We had a stare down for a few seconds before Berkley finally turned and grabbed her purse off my dresser. “Gotta go. Think about it.” She zipped out the door without looking back.

  I stood there and watched her walk away. Why couldn’t I tell her the truth? She would have been cool about it if I’d only told her.

  ****

  After a steamy shower I relaxed enough to take a closer look at my homework. Math didn’t come as easy to me as the rest of the subjects I took in school and AS Pre-Calculus was especially hard. If I lived through it I’d take AP Calc as a senior and be able to take a test to earn college credits.

  After what seemed like an eternity I finally finished and was about to call Berkley to double check my answers when I remembered she was still mad at me.

  Wasn’t going to risk restarting the argument over driving. I’d have to get my mom to look at them. What a pain. She’d do out each problem to make sure the answers were right. That was probably because math wasn’t her strong point either. Boy, I could have used Dad about now. Math was his forte. Too bad I hadn’t inherited the math gene.

  It was about fifteen minutes later when she told me there were three wrong answers - out of thirty. She pointed it out because she wondered why I singled them out with water.

  The paper held three water spots. One over each of the wrong answers. Okay, like how strange was that?

  It didn’t take me long to figure out that the drops occurred from my wet hair as I was doing my homework.

  But to have three random wet spots hit the page exactly where the only three wrong answers were? Major weird, to say the least.

  Skyler rubbed along my ankle then, looked up at the ceiling and mewed. I followed his gaze. Are you up there, Grandma? I thought wondering if she aided with the math correcting.

  As soon as I thought it, I realized I was probably right. She must be here trying to give me direction.

  I just needed to pay attention. And ask Mom a lot more questions. Who was I kidding? If I wanted answers I wasn’t going to get them from her.

  At this point it wasn’t that I didn’t trust her or thought that she’d leave things out. It’s just that kids don’t always know that much about their parents. I mean, for real, we always think of our parents as just that. We rarely consider them as individuals having lives that predated us. For that reason, it’s hard to imagine them young. So we don’t ask. And because it’s over and seeming to come from another life – they don’t tell. It’s not that they’re secrets – just history.

  Then I remembered Vera Taunton. She knew my grandmother. They had been neighbors and friends for years.

  There was a good chance she might know things about Grandma that my mother didn’t know or simply didn’t remember. And she had said to stop by any time. Well now seemed like as good a time as any, except that it was getting dark. I’d go first thing after classes tomorrow.

  The hours didn’t fly fast enough, but finally I made it home from school. Determined to go digging for gold I baked a quick batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies and set off for my neighbor’s house, berating myself at least a dozen times on the way for going there with an ulterior motive.

  What kind of girl was I to use an innocent person for my own sick curiosity?

  A desperate one.

  Vera Taunton didn’t get a lot of company especially at this time of day. Her friendly and genuine smile made me feel like more of a rat for fishing for information. “So what do you remember about my grandmother? She died when I was so young I don’t remember that much about her.”

  “Marie was a lovely woman and a good neighbor.” She handed me a tall glass of milk and a floral plastic coaster to put it on. “I remember she always kept an immaculate yard and grew the most beautiful flowers.”

  Okay, not the kind of information that I was looking for, but then again she might not just blurt out the psychic stuff right away.

  “We used to play cards every now and again. Your grandfather liked to play bid Whist.”

  “Was Grandma good at cards? Did she always seem to know which cards to play?” I asked hoping that would give her a hint. I mean, being a psychic, I assumed she’d be good with cards. Well you know what they say about assumptions.

  “Gracious, no. It used to make your grandfather crazy. No matter how many times he went over the game she never did pick the right cards to win. As a matter of fact it was the exact opposite.

  Unfortunately, I could have beat around the bush for another couple of centuries and Mrs. Taunton still wouldn’t have a clue. Finally I just came straight to the point. “So, did you ever hear anything about my grandmother being sort of … um… psychic?”

  Nope. She hadn’t heard anything about that. And I could tell by the way she laughed for five minutes and practically fell off the cat-scratched over-stuffed couch, that she wasn’t exactly a believer. So I did the only thing I could think of, I changed the subject and patted Fluffy.

  Well at least I made an effort. My grandmother and her ‘capabilities’ had everything to do with what was happening to me. But was I just getting help from the other side in the form of my grandmother’s ghost? Or was I also psychic? Either way just asking the question made me a perfect candidate for Dr. Martin’s couch and maybe the nearest sanitarium.

  Chapter Eight

  I flicked through the channels with the remote hoping something good would suddenly appear. Normally I’d just go to the guide section and check out everything that was on first. Not in that kind of mood today. I would have been too bummed if there’d been nothing worth watching.

  This way I had to watch a second or two of each program. Occasionally I’d find some new show this way. Sort of the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ theory. Often the little blurbs didn’t do the actual show justice. So I was a little more engrossed in the television than on the average day.

  That had to be the reason I didn’t hear the sound of anyone approaching. That’s why it was such a shock to see Berkley materialize in my doorway like she’d just been beamed there from outer space. Then again with the way my life had been going lately, maybe she had been.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked as she stood there under the doorjamb as if she wasn’t sure if she was coming in or not.

  I stared her down and knew my mom ratted me out before Berkley said any more. It had
been in her voice and in her expression. She had the ‘that’s sad, wow your life sucks even more than I had imagined’ look. The one that was an iota more pity than I could stand seeing.

  That look was the reason I never gave the details. I didn’t want people to pity me, didn’t want anyone to see how truly pathetic I really was. I mean, like who would?

  I shrugged when I realized she actually was waiting for a response. “It’s still too new. I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “I get it. But you could have saved an argument if you’d just said why. I wouldn’t have pushed.”

  I did the cool one eyebrow thing. She laughed, took off her coat as she entered the room and tossed it over the back of the desk chair along with her backpack. “Okay, maybe I would have pushed a little, but I wouldn’t have made you talk about the accident. But since we’re back to driver’s ed., what if you only took the class, the written part? You don’t have to take the driving lessons or actually go for a road test,” she pleaded. “Think about it.”

  If it’s one thing I learned early on, it’s pick your battles and cut your losses. There was no reason I couldn’t accommodate her with only the class part. I mean, how bad could learning the driving rules be? “Okay,” I said more to shut her up than anything.

  She threw her arms around me and hugged tight. “I’m sorry about the other day. And I have a peace offering,” she said as she released me.

  Out of her backpack she pulled a few books and what looked like a deck of cards. “These are some books on ESP. They talk about the different kinds and how to develop that psychic thing you’ve got going.”

  Yeah, great. Just what I always wanted. How to be a freak in just a few easy lessons.

  “And I’d want to develop this for what reason?”

  She gave me the look. Like I’d just asked her something stupid like how to spell the word dog. You know the look I mean, the one that says, how could you possibly be so dense?

  “To control it. If you don’t control it, then it controls you.”