Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  “Eyes – shut. And if you must talk aloud, keep it down.”

  “Are there a lot?”

  “Didn’t think you were unique, did you?”

  “No, but …”

  “Lots of people have latent ability but every now and then, genes, chance, whatever, sparks something off and you get oddities like us.”

  “How did you know – about me I mean?”

  “Just listen can’t you. No questions.” she may have been big on psi but not on patience. “When you started to panic earlier, you blasted the place down, could hardly miss you. You, and others like you are what this project is really all about.”

  “I don’t understand.” although of course, in that instant, I did, perfectly.

  “Exactly.” She said. I didn’t like that, didn’t like her reading my mind, the exchange of ideas before they were fully formed, uncomfortably intimate. For a brief moment I sensed her amusement before she blacked me out again.

  “Taste of your own medicine? Anyway, your choice. Get involved, don’t get involved, I can only give you facts.”

  “Facts?”

  “Good God Almighty child, must you repeat every word I say? Listen – Russia and China are way, way ahead on this, been at it for years, huge sums gone into research. The West has a lot of catching up to do, although America’s got its act together now, they’ve set up something in Washington DC. You’re a valuable commodity and there’s a lot at stake. If they confirm what they suspect – you really messed up those tests – they can’t afford to leave you alone. You’re good, stronger than many I’ve come across. They’ll want you, want you to work with them, want to find out what makes you what you are.”

  “They can’t force me.” I said. She carried on as if I hadn’t interrupted but irritation filtered through, “Maybe, maybe not. Look, in the eighteen months or so this’s been going, they’ve only found a couple of adepts, they’ve lost several others.”

  “Lost?”

  “I got to them before he did.” a cruelly accurate caricature of the unctuous Dr Dreck oozed briefly through my head,

  “Is he … ?”

  “No and pretty sour about it, give his right arm for what you’ve got. Don’t underestimate him, he’s clever, persuaded the government here to fund him for at least five years, despite the fact he had to leave South Africa in a hurry – some experiments went very wrong.”

  “Experiments?” We were fast advancing into areas I wanted nothing to do with and momentarily I wondered hopefully if maybe I’d eaten something that disagreed with me and was hallucinating this whole episode.

  “Forget it, you’re not Alice in Wonderland and this is no fairytale.” There, she was doing it again, the woman had no manners.

  “Pay attention, not much time. He thinks – and he’s convinced others, people who hold the purse strings for these sorts of project – that the capability of individuals with even mild psi ability can be boosted with drugs. Sometimes it can.”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Sometimes it can’t. Meet Peter.” A hospital bed, a boy, my age I thought, hooked up to an array of monitors, drips, tubes. Eyelids half-open, dead-flesh white face, mouth drooping on one side, bubble of spittle inflating, deflating with each machine-forced breath.

  “And this is Peter’s mind.” she said and showed me – nothing, a slate wiped clean.

  “What happened?”

  “A drug they used – didn’t have quite the desired effect.”

  “Will he be … ?”

  “Anybody’s guess. There’s more. Got to be quick.” Indeed she was getting fainter, fading like a radio tuner going off station. Suddenly I didn’t want her to go.

  “Marina Daskanyeva, seven, Moscow.” She hauled my attention back. Not quite in focus, but clear enough. I knew what I was seeing was a memory, something she’d herself seen in the past. A pretty, round-faced, blond-plaited child, concentrating intently, upper teeth pinioning lower lip, eyes narrowed. She was watching something scampering around a wire cage – a rat I thought it might be. I could feel the intensity of the child’s concentration folding in and around itself. Then the rat blew apart. Literally. Bloodily raw bits, spreading in slow motion, seemingly filling the cage before they began to settle in grisly piles. I gagged, opened my eyes quickly, but the taste of the picture wouldn’t go.

  “Powerful stuff, huh?” soft now in my head. “It’s not all like that you know – constructive, destructive, depends how it’s used.”

  “I don’t want to be involved.” I said miserably, shaken to the core and beyond. I knew, with instinctive certainty that what I’d seen done, I could also do – it wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  “Who are you anyway?” I demanded, fear generating belligerence. “Why should I trust you?”

  “I’m not asking you to. Make your own decisions. Your life – do what you want. Use what you’ve got, don’t use it, entirely up to you. I’ve told you what you need to know, tried to stop you giving yourself away, although frankly, you’ve made a real pig’s ear of things so far – they know something doesn’t add up, but maybe we’ve muddied the waters enough to put them off. Remember, if you want to lie low – random, always random answers. They can’t catch you unless you let them, but they will try to trip you up. And try not to blast out so, you’re giving me a splitting head – and trust? Don’t. Not anybody. Good luck.” and then she simply wasn’t present any more, just a faint echo taste like lemon-sherbet fizz although that too disappeared, so quickly, I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t imagined it. Trust no-one – great, I’d just met a psychic version of Grandma.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was frustrated – and angry. I had questions by the truckload. There was so much I didn’t understand and what I did was enough to scare me rigid. With her going, my world had snapped into focus and back to normal. I was also feeling – probably for the first time in my comfortably secure existence – vulnerable, scared and way out of my depth. I was still standing with my hands over the sink, when the door opened.

  “You took your time young lady.” If Miss Merry was aiming for jocular, she missed by a mile, “Going to be all day?”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, “Tummy upset.” and dried my hands. As I did, I tried to read her but I was too nervous to concentrate. Was she, I wondered, the warning voice, she was certainly snappy enough but I didn’t think so, she had an acrid, dry taste, very different from Irritable’s. She was looking at me intently and I adopted what I hoped was a suitable, Psychic? Not-me! face as I again followed her rigid white coated back.

  She led the way back along the corridor but turned off to take us up a different staircase. I could feel an odd, fine trembling in my arms and legs and was acutely aware I hadn’t the faintest idea how to keep my mind under wraps. My concerns had always been to shield myself from others, vice versa had never arisen. Miss Merry was talking over her shoulder.

  “Sorry?” I hadn’t heard a word,

  “The others,” she repeated, “Are just finishing a session, so you’ll stay with me until it’s time for lunch. Have you found your day interesting?” Interesting wasn’t quite how I’d put it and a one on one session with Miss Congeniality was way down my list of wants but I mumbled politely as I followed her into a small office. Scrupulously tidy and sharply redolent of the same disinfectant she’d used on the headphones. She waved me to a chair on one side of the desk and produced a few comics which she said I might like, while she moved to the other side, opening a drawer to extract a blue, elastic-bound folder. I felt twitchy and alert on any number of levels, trying to catch, make sense of and steer clear of whatever was going on. My choice, Irritable had said, well, there was certainly no way I wanted to follow the route trodden by Peter and the Russian girl. Did I doubt what I’d been shown? No, actually not for one single second. She’d said trust no-one but she’d been in my head and I’d sensed enough to know, whatever she’d shown me, she believed implicitly to be the truth.

  Miss Merry had her head b
ent over her file and I, to all intents and purposes was engrossed in a Bunty comic, when there was a subtle change in the room. I kept my eyes down. She’d turned a page within the folder and was looking at a series of photographs, six of them reproduced on the page in stark black and white. She was concentrating unnaturally hard and even in my confusion I realised they must be from some medical textbook, they were like nothing I’d ever seen before, certainly nothing I ever wanted to see again. For just a few seconds, before I shielded, I shared, a partially dissected baby on a slab and another unforgiving shot of an infant with a grossly malformed skull – Anencephalic – the label beside the picture was as sharp as the image and both etched themselves irretrievably into my brain. Merry was looking across at me now, assessing my reaction and the sun opaqued the lenses of her wire-framed glasses, turning her gaze dead and blank. For the second time that day I felt blood draining but if the stakes were as high as I’d been told, I must not react. I glanced up from my comic, as if surprised to catch her eye and smiled, polite and expectant.

  “Is it lunchtime?” There was a pause before she snapped her folder closed on its unforgettable content and rose abruptly, looking at her watch, her face expressionless. “I’ll take you down now.”

  *

  Children and teachers were spreading noisily out across the grass of the gardens and as Merry and I emerged from the building, I took in gulps of the fresh air wanting to rid my nose of the disinfectant, my mind of what I’d seen. The green ran the whole length of the back of the building, circled and split by a stone-paved path bordered by well-trimmed hedges. The spring sunshine was warm, the crowd noisy and the outing spirit had resurfaced with the promise of food. It seemed to me I was the only one stiff and stale with sweat and fright.

  I spotted Elizabeth and some others from our school and went slowly to join them. Of the group, it appeared I was the only who’d been singled out for the boothed room. Maybe, they said, with envy I was going to be picked for the survey and even Elizabeth, used to effortlessly scoring highest marks in any test, was intrigued and slightly put out both by my selection and my monosyllabic responses to her questions.

  Merry was now nowhere to be seen and I retrieved my lunch bag from the diminished pile and paid lip service to the contents before scrunching it up and handing it to one of the teachers, who had a large plastic bag for the purpose. We had about an hour’s grace before the white-coated staff reclaimed us to muttered groans. The general consensus seemed to be this wasn’t turning out to be half as much fun as had been promised. We were again split into groups, some people shepherded back into the main building, others, including Elizabeth and myself, directed to the Portakabins at the front of the building. As we all went our different ways. I spotted my old friend ‘Call me Mo’, who found time to give me a friendly wave and my other friend Iris, who didn’t.

  *

  Surprisingly more spacious than it looked from the outside, within the cabin were half a dozen rectangular tables set well apart, with chairs either side. Three boys and three girls were allocated to each table, in the midst of which sat an outsize dice. Merry, clipboard in hand was, I noted with apprehension, taking our group, accompanied by an assistant, someone I hadn’t seen before. Gliding smoothly to the front of the room, she took up position in front of the blackboard and such was her chilly presence that chatter, laughter and chair scraping promptly died.

  “I expect you’re tired after this morning’s efforts,” she smiled tightly. “So, we’re starting this afternoon with a game.” She paused, if she was waiting for a hurrah, it was unforthcoming. “Each team, girls against boys, is going to try and get the dice off the table. But, no hands – you have to blow.” She puckered lips and blew an example in case we were in any doubt. “First team to get their dice off the opposite side of the table and onto the floor gets the prize. Now,” she paused and looked around, “Everyone, hands behind backs.”

  The dice were heavier than they looked. With the best will in the world and enough co-ordinated huffing and puffing to blow the house down, it was well-nigh impossible to move them. It was obvious to me, full of recently acquired knowledge, what it was they were hoping some of us would do to compensate. Flushed faces around me bore testimony to effort if not results and there were howls of accusation when one set of boys, using their initiative and not their hands, tilted the table with their knees. I couldn’t always see Merry as she moved around the room, but sensing her fish-eye on me more than I liked, decided it couldn’t do any harm and might take the heat off to introduce the odd red herring.

  Continuing to puff energetically and non-productively, I turned my attention to the dice on the table next but one to ours, giving it a hefty nudge or two and sending it toppling over the edge of the table. As it hit the floor, three triumphant girls shot to their feet in excitement. Then an uneasy thought occurred. Might that not have been such a cunning plan after all? Might one of those girls right now be attracting rather more of the Merry interest than would be comfortable? I couldn’t risk that. So, working to a somewhat muddled theory based on needles in haystacks, I did a swift round of the room. In no time at all, three other tables were diceless too.

  The room descended into noisy chaos and excitement with Merry having to raise her voice to make herself heard and get everyone re-seated. Tight-lipped, clipboard rammed to chest, she surveyed us for a moment in silence. Someone, she suspected, was making a monkey out of her and although I kept my eyes studiously down, I thought she looked at me a little longer than the rest and, for a moment, I picked up her confusion and the strength of her cold anger. Merry with the laughing eyes was a scientifically-minded individual and for her, there always had to be pattern, consistency, logic and reason even within the field in which she was working. Today wasn’t panning out that way and anything that didn’t fit her parameters disturbed the order of things, provoking a violent frustration, the force of which I sensed, alarmed even her. As she moved her head, I could see where sharp, starched white shirt collar had scored an angry red mark below her chin. I hoped it was sore.

  “Well,” she unclenched her jaw, “I don’t think we’ve ever had quite so much success on that one before. Thank you everybody. Now, Mrs Metcalfe,” she nodded and her assistant turned to gather up an armful of boxes from a pile in the corner of the room, “Is going to give each table a Snakes and Ladders game board. We’ll do girls against boys again as you’re already sitting that way. Yes,” she snapped in answer to a raised arm, “Of course you can use your hands this time.”

  Now, here was another fine dilemma I’d got myself into, what exactly were they looking for this time? Would it be a good idea to lie low and do nothing or should I rig some scores across the room? All action seemed fraught with possibly un-visualised traps. By this time I’d acquired a solid headache, the uneven rhythm of discomfort that was the familiar follow-on from too much activity on the cerebral front. As I dithered, Miss Merry glided to the door in response to a knock, it was the young woman I’d seen earlier on the stairs – longer ago it seemed, than the few hours it really was. Miss M put a hand on her arm as she entered and they stood conversing quietly for a moment.

  It was hard to tell her age, anywhere between eighteen to late twenties and she was smaller than I’d thought, shorter by a head than the older woman. Slim, finely boned, holding herself as if to balance the mass and weight of the hair dressed high on her head. The material of her dress, close up, was richly gold and orange, the colours changing where they reflected the light as she moved. Cut away at the shoulder it left narrow arms bare except for several thin gold bangles that jangled musically as she moved.

  Her face in profile was as expressionless as Merry’s, together, these two must be the life and soul of any staff do. When she turned slightly I thought she looked – carved – is the best way I can describe it, with the fine line of her forehead moulding, seamlessly arrogant into nose and mouth. I wondered why she wasn’t wearing dark glasses like other sightless people I’d se
en. In fact her eyes, depth-filled and dark seemed focused not on the woman now earnestly speaking to her but on a far-beyond point. Merry finished what she had to say and the younger woman nodded, murmured something and turning, swept her sightless (were they sightless?) eyes over the room.

  Everyone of course had stopped what they were doing, it was impossible not to stare she just seemed so oddly out of place in the pedestrian grey setting of the Portakabin. Holding the white stick before her, she began now to move slowly round the perimeter of the room. It was quite clear to me why she was there and who she was looking for. I knew now that what I was, was more than just a socially embarrassing problem for my parents.

  People had turned back to the Snakes and Ladders but the whole pace of things had slowed, all surreptitiously watching the young woman slowly circling. Every now and then she would pause by a child, her head slightly tilted while the object of her attention sat wide-eyed and very still, and then she’d move on. I didn’t know whether to try and scan, but the very act of doing so might draw the attention of the ‘diviner’ for I had no doubts at all that’s what she was. In the next instant I realised I was being a fool, of course I could be heard, even if I wasn’t doing anything, how else had Irritable found me? Desperately I tried to haul everything inside my head and blank my mind. For a moment I thought I’d succeeded – a cat smugly hiding under the curtain, with tail twitching in full view. The woman paused by our table, turning her face to me across the heads of the three boys sitting opposite. She couldn’t see me, but she flooded my head.