The Ethereal Vision

by Liam Donnelly

  ***

  Jack called emergency services for the driver, but he really didn't need them; he was merely drunk, and he couldn’t remember much of what had happened. He was arrested for drunk driving and taken away in a second police car. The remaining officer looked at the tire marks and the huge arcing circles they had traced in the snow. He then came over to ask Nora about the details. Jane had recovered by that time and gone inside. Jack stayed outside with Nora as she talked to the guard. She told him that just before the car hit them, the driver swerved to avoid them and lost control of the vehicle. He seemed to accept this.

  Although Nora could tell he knew something was out of his reach, she saw him acquiesce, probably knowing that whatever vital piece of information was missing, he would never find it. Thankfully, the road had been dark and silent at the time; nobody else had seen the car “magically” pushed out of their path.

  The police officer got the details he needed and stayed on the road a few moments longer, taking notes. Nora went up the steps into the house and closed the door but stayed at the front of the living room, watching from the window. The man walked over to the casing of the light that lay smashed on the ground below him. He stared at it for a good ten seconds with his hands at his sides, tapping a digital device against his leg. He looked up at the light fixture for a moment, then got into his car and drove away, not taking his eyes off their house until the car was fully out of sight.

  That night, after Jane had gone to sleep, Nora had a conversation with Jack. After making tea, they sat on stools in Nora’s kitchen. Only one small lamp illuminated the room.

  “So what now?” Jack asked as Nora took a sip of her tea. She was still trembling slightly.

  “I don’t know,” she responded, looking off to the side. “I’m not sure there’s a whole lot we can do.” She paused, thinking. “If there’s a confrontation…if those people come again…I don’t think she’d have a chance at defending herself, or getting away from them even.” Nora looked down at the cup of tea in her hands before returning her gaze to Jack. “One of the men from before, I mean…ten years ago…he was carrying a gun.”

  Jack’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yes, well, it was some kind of projectile weapon. Maybe a tranquiliser gun or a Taser. I don’t know. I only recall seeing it afterward. I was too distracted in the moment to really pay attention, but he knelt down, his coat slipped to the side, and I could see it tucked into a holster on his waist.”

  “Wow,” Jack said, then continued quickly, “and she can’t do anything, Jane, not if it affects her like that. She can’t protect herself.”

  “No, not yet anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t affect her as badly as the last time. She’s kept it stifled all these years, but maybe if it had been allowed to develop properly—taken its natural course—it wouldn’t knock her out the way it does now. She was exposed to too much at a young age. I think that’s why she reacted so badly at first. But tonight it wasn’t nearly as bad. I think with a bit more time she would be able to use it reliably.”

  “Well that’s great, but we don’t have time for that now, do we?” he said with the slightly curt tone of impatience.

  “No.”

  “When will they be here?”

  She considered this. “The last time they were here within three days. Who knows what’s changed since then though.”

  Jack lifted his cup and drank. Nora was glad that he was taking such an active role. She could tell he was secretly marvelling at what he had witnessed, but he was ignoring those feelings for the moment so that he could focus on the real difficulty she would soon face. She was grateful to him for that.

  “We’ll we have to go somewhere. I’ll come with you,” he said, his eyes suddenly glowing with a new urgency.

  “Yes, but where?”

  He stared back at her and nodded his head slowly.

  She glared at him. “We can’t go anywhere official, Jack, not like a hotel. These people—whoever they are—have had ten years to work on this. They’d find us too easily.” She put her hand to her face and rubbed her eyes forcefully, then looked off to the side again, thinking. Finally, the light came back into her eyes as she looked at him. “The cabin in Wexford. I’ve been thinking about it lately. I don’t think there’s any trail that points there. We’ve always paid in cash.” She thought about this and remembered why. “It was the man who owns the park; he’s elderly. He always asked for cash for some reason, so there’s no direct connection. It’s quiet, and the park will be empty this time of year.”

  “Okay. That sounds good to me,” he said as he watched her from confident yet weary eyes. “This will work, okay? I’ll go home and get some supplies. You get some rest, and we’ll pack the car in the morning and go. Do you have to make arrangements with work?”

  “I’ll just quit.” Jack glared at her. “Well, you know, I’ve been waiting for a reason to leave anyway. This will do just fine. Besides, if she does get taken I’ll have to…”

  Jack held up a hand. “Don’t say that,” he said. The serious tone in his voice was palpable, as though it were an invisible shield.

  “Okay,” she responded and pressed her lips together, nodding slightly and holding back a single tear.

  He kissed her on the cheek and walked to the front door. He turned around and said, “See you tomorrow,” then closed the door behind him.

  Nora sat at the kitchen counter in the dim light drinking tea for a while after he had left. For some time, she couldn’t really think. Then the thoughts came through her like a torrent—words like telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition, words she didn’t really want to know.

  She managed to put these thoughts aside and began to pace the downstairs of their home. She tried to go through a checklist of things she would need to bring, but she found her thoughts constantly wandering. When her mind would not stop, she sat on the sofa and asked herself, Okay, Nora, what is it?

  After a moment of consideration, the thing she had been avoiding rose into her mind. First, there had been a man standing on the other side of the road. It hadn’t seemed to her like a physical presence, but a presence nonetheless. He appeared amidst the confusion, and she was only dimly aware of him at the time. He was tall and wearing a long black coat that closed tightly around his body. His gaze had pierced the scene with an odd air of authority even though he did nothing but stand and watch the event unfold.

  Was this the man her daughter had referred to all those years ago when they had sat up drinking tea? (Or was it cocoa?) Then her brow furrowed; such details seemed stupidly beyond her at that moment. She wondered if he would be there to help them again. Was the spectre of this person real? Or did his return signal something outside her ability to grasp?

  With that concern off her mind, Nora returned to mentally checking off a list of things to bring to the cabin. But there was still something else. It was something her daughter had said to her all those years ago in that strange, late-night conversation when the trauma of the crash was still ever present: We won’t be able to get away.

  Her daughter’s words echoed to her from the past like a beacon from a forgotten land. She did her best to ignore them; either way, they had to try.