More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series)

by Silva, Linda Kay

  “You need to get out more. Yeah, the Mute. She’s gonna do something stupid. Come on. I’d rather not watch her stab someone with scissors or something.”

  I pulled my arm away and started back to the dayroom.

  “What’s the matter with you, J.? Have you fucking lost your mind?”

  “Probably.” When I got to the dayroom, Big George, Tall Tommy and Small Sal were all cornering the girl known as The Mute. To my horror, she held a pair of scissors to her own neck. She had every intention of pushing them in, too. She wasn’t bluffing.

  “Get back, Jane!” one of the nurses ordered.

  “Stop!” I yelled over them. All three orderlies turned to me. When Big George saw that it was me who was shouting, he muttered something to the other orderlies before approaching me. “Let her through.”

  The nurses let me go.

  “What you doin’, sweetpea?”

  “She’s not bluffing, Big George. Please. If you guys get any closer, she will shove those scissors into her neck.”

  Big George looked hard at me and whispered, “How do you know this, girl?”

  “I…I don’t know.” I lowered my voice. “I just do. You have to believe me, she’s not kidding.”

  Big George peered into my eyes so long, it made me uncomfortable. Finally, he turned back to the dayroom. “Hang on a second, guys. Back off and give her a little breathing room.”

  One of the younger doctors pushed through the crowd. “What’s going on here? I thought I said to sedate her. Can’t the three of you handle her? She’s just a girl.” The doctor was a smallish Asian man who weighed all of one hundred pounds.

  Big George cut his eyes over to me. “Jane?”

  Making my way over to her, I was nearly knocked down by the fear coming from The Mute. “What’s her name?” I whispered to Big George as I walked by.

  “Mary. Her name is Mary.”

  “What in the hell is going on here? I told you how I wanted this handled!” The little doctor was getting irritated that nobody would listen to him.

  I ignored the remainder of their conversation and focused on Mary The Mute. Her fear was overpowering; not just because of the shackles, which she hated, but of what she was willing to do to herself.

  “I know you’re really scared,” I said softly as I approached her.

  Her eyes were on fire and she looked at me; wild with fear, distress and anxiety. I felt every single emotion she was experiencing, and she was feeling them all loudly in her silence. “I know you’re not kidding about using those.” I motioned to the scissors. “I had the same thoughts when they had me all trussed up, too. It’s the shackles, isn’t it?”

  Mary swallowed hard and then barely nodded. The scissor tip remained pressed against her throat, but I felt some of her fear ebb.

  I stepped closer to her. She blinked several times, but made no move to step away or to use the scissors. “You don’t need to be so scared. I don’t trust anyone here, either, except Big George. You can trust him. I swear.” I watched Mary’s eyes move over my shoulder to Big George. “And you can trust me. I’m not a loon or a nutjob. I’m afraid, too.”

  Mary lowered the scissors a little. It was so very strange. I felt…I felt like I could hear her through her emotions. She couldn’t speak…she didn’t have to; not to me.

  “I’m scared shitless,” I said, “because I have no place to go from here. I have no family, no home, nothing. It totally sucks. Do you have a family?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Lucky you. I know…none of us here are very lucky. I mean, we’re here in this horrible place that insists it’s helping us with its drugs and restraints. What a joke. I’m sure some of us belong here. Hell, maybe I do, too, but at least you have some place to go when this nightmare is over. But you know the beauty of nightmares? Eventually, they end. They all do. This one will, too. For all of us. And when it does, don’t you want to be around?”

  Mary hesitated before lowering the scissors. She trusted me…trusted my words. I turned to Big George. “Can you please put those shackles away? She doesn’t need them. Please don’t rush her.”

  Big George nodded and signaled to the other orderlies to back away. Then, he said something to the doctor, who stepped aside. “Go ahead, Jane.”

  I sat down at a table near Mary and patted the tabletop. “Come sit, Mary. Leave the scissors there and come sit with me awhile.” To my delight, she did. Her fear was much less now that the shackles were out of sight. I felt her exhaustion more than anything else.

  “I’m Jane,” I said. “I’m here because I beat a kid up with my math book.”

  She grinned slightly. I guessed her to be closer to my age, maybe a little younger.

  “And you’re here because…” I closed my eyes and there it was. “Oh. You suddenly stopped talking, huh?”

  Her eyes grew wide. She looked as surprised as I felt. Nodding, she blinked back her tears.

  “Wow. You just stopped talking and so this was someone’s idea of a solution? How shitty is that?” I suddenly felt emotions from someone behind me, so I reached out and gently put my hand on hers. “You go with Big George now, okay? He’s a good guy and he’ll make sure no one puts those shackles on you any more. Okay?”

  She looked over my shoulder and then back at me before nodding.

  “Yes, I trust him,” I repeated.

  She nodded and then ever so slightly smiled. She was pretty when she smiled, her brown eyes shifting from dark to milk chocolate.

  “You know what they say…suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Remember that, okay?”

  Mary nodded again as she rose.

  “Good.” I rose. “Do you know Celeste?”

  She nodded and smiled bigger. “Celeste told me that pretending to cooperate is the best plan for getting out of here fast.” I pulled my practice button out and slipped it into her hand. “Don’t let them drug you anymore,” I whispered. “Practice hiding them with this.”

  As Mary stood, she nodded and started past me. Just as we were side by side, she whispered so softly I almost missed it. “Thank you.” It was the slightest of whispers and meant only for me.

  I didn’t know why that meant so much to me, but it did, and something changed for me at that moment; I stopped being afraid. Maybe I really was going nuts, but even that wasn’t so scary anymore.

  When I got back to my room, I lay on the bed and wondered if Danica had given up coming to see me. I missed her so much. Away in here, it was as if the world outside wasn’t real anymore. You knew it was out there, you knew it went on without you, but every day you were gone you became less and less a part of it, less and less real…almost like you were evaporating.

  I was almost asleep when there was a slight knock on my door. It was Big George.

  “How is she?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Better. Whatever you said to her really helped.”

  I nodded and looked away. Big George had come to my room seeking answers. I didn’t know the specific questions, but I had a pretty good idea of what he was looking for. “That’s good. You know, you guys need to ditch those shackles.”

  He pulled up the chair, his eyes were riveted to mine. “You really believe you’re going crazy, don’t you?”

  I nodded and swallowed hard.

  “You’re not.”

  “How do you know?”

  Big George leaned closer and whispered, “Because I think I know what’s happening to you. I think I know what you are.”

  What I was? Oh, that was just grand.

  “What…what do you mean you know what I am?” Sitting up, I stared at Big George. He knew. I could see it in his eyes.

  “Am I nuts?”

  Big George smiled a mouthful of long, white teeth. “Not even remotely. What you got is a gift.” Big George put his hand out and I put mine in his. He led me out into hall, where we walked a ways until we came to the small quad outside. It was enclosed with a twelve-foot-tall fence.

>   “You’re kidding me, right?”

  He slowly shook his head. “If you are what I think you are, it’s a gift. You knew what Mary was feeling without her ever saying a word, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You feel all these emotions from everyone around?”

  My jaw dropped. “Yes! That is exactly what it feels like. It comes in waves sometimes knocking the wind out of me. Sometimes, I feel it in my head, like I can actually hear their feelings in my brain.”

  Big George patted my leg. “Ain’t nothing wrong with you, sweetpea. Trust me. You’re so special, God gave you a rare and precious gift.” He held his hand up to stop me. “But it’s only a gift if you know how to use it, otherwise, it feels like you’re losing your mind. I know it feels that way, but I know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t know what to trust anymore, Big George. I can barely trust myself. You have no idea.”

  Big George leaned closer. “Actually…I do.”

  “Are you—”

  “No, but my mother, Melika is.”

  I blinked several times. “She feels things, too?”

  He nodded. “More than most. What you are, sweetpea, is an empath…and probably more. We won’t know what all you have until you’re checked out.”

  “An empath?”

  “Yeah. You’re a feeler. You have the ability to feel the emotions of those around you. I’ve only met a couple in my life.”

  “You mean there are…others?”

  “Sure. Some are quite powerful. Not all are empaths. Some are telepaths, some clairvoyants. You, little one, are in a select group of individuals known as paranormals or, as my mother likes to call them, supers…for supernaturals. You have a rare and precious gift. The key is learning how to control it.”

  “Control it? I don’t even understand it.”

  “I know, I know. First thing we have to do is get you out of here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What you have, we can’t help you with here. Conventional medicine doesn’t even recognize what we’re talking about. All we’ll do is talk at you or drug you up, and neither of those will protect you.”

  “Protect me? Protect me from what?” I felt a mixture of alarm and relief.

  “From all those emotions hammering away at you. You gotta learn about your skill, how to harness your power, how to protect yourself, how to understand who and what you are. You haven’t mentioned any of this to Doctor Knowles, have you?”

  “Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” I would have cried, but I didn’t have time. I was overflowing with questions. “There are so many things I want to know. Oh my God. All this time, I thought I was going crazy.”

  Big George ran his big hand over his head. “I’d like to answer your questions, but you need answers from someone who has all of them.”

  “Melika?”

  He nodded. “Melika. She’s the real deal. I’m just a spotter.”

  “A spotter?”

  “It’s my job to help find those like you who don’t know what they are yet and get to them before…well…before they do something stupid.”

  “Like kill themselves?”

  He nodded.

  “Will she come see me?” I asked.

  Big George shook his head. “Can’t. She lives in New Orleans. She’s the best there is. If you’re going to live with this and be sane, you need someone to show you how. You need help and Melika can give it to you. She may be the only person who can.”

  “But how? Can she call me here?”

  Big George slowly shook his head. “This ain’t something you can learn about in an hour or a day or even a month. We’re going to have to get you out of here. I can get you off the floor and out of the hospital, but we’re going to need some help getting you from here to New Orleans, especially since you’re only fourteen. Is there someone who can help? Do you have any of your own money?”

  Yes and yes. There were two people I knew who would help; Danica and Britt Bevelaqua. I hadn’t heard from Britt since she ran, but I still had the forty dollars she’d given me. “My best friend, Danica, can help.”

  “Okay. You give me the number and let me see what I can do. We’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it in.” Big George reached for my hand and held it tightly as he outlined his plan. When he finished, I sighed.

  “But won’t they just release me back to the state pretty soon? Can’t we just wait until then instead of sneaking out and risking your job?”

  He rose and motioned for me to follow. “You beat that boy up because of something you felt, didn’t you?”

  I nodded as I followed. “I knew as sure as if he’d said it. He was going to really hurt me, so I just kept hitting him so he wouldn’t get the chance.”

  “And what about Mary? You knew what was going on with her, huh?”

  “She’s scared of the shackles and being tied down. She can talk, you know.”

  “Can, but won’t.”

  “Won’t but does. Where are we going?” Big George was taking me down a locked hallway forbidden to the rest of us.

  “You’ll see.”

  We took a couple of squeaky turns down hallways filled with moaners, screamers, chatterbugs and singers. I knew where we were now. We were in the J ward where the hopelessly insane awaited removal to some other treatment facility where they would, most likely, live out the remainder of their pitiful lives.

  When Big George finally stopped, he peered into a small glass window in the door. “Look at this one in here.”

  I had to stand on tiptoe to see, and I recoiled. A poor, demented young girl was rocking back and forth, mouth hanging open with a foot long string of drool hanging from her chin. She looked no more than fifteen or sixteen. “What’s wrong with her?” I turned from the window, feeling chills and goose bumps on my arms. “She’s so…”

  “Crazy?”

  “So young to be crazy.”

  “She wasn’t always nuts. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t crazy at all when she got here.”

  I remembered Celeste’s words about this place making people crazy. “Did bringing her here make her mad?”

  Big George sadly shook his head. “No, it’s not where she is that made her insane. It’s what she is that did that to her. You see…that sad little girl in there is…an empath. She came in here for the same reasons you did, but I couldn’t get her out in time. I couldn’t get her to Melika in time. And without my mother’s help, you’ll wind up just like her.”

  And so it turned out that Big George’s mother wasn’t just an empath, but a very powerful woman who spent her time teaching people new to the world of psionics how to adjust to and utilize their abilities; telepaths, clairvoyants, empaths and telekinetics came to her from all over the world if they were caught in time. The majority of us were not, and usually ended up in a rubber room or worse, like this poor girl.

  Fear punched me in the gut. I was trapped in a cage with only one way out.

  Life is filled with unlikely heroes and mine is no exception.

  After Big George dropped his big bomb about my tenuous future, we got down to planning my escape. He could help me escape at night, but what then? I refused to do anything that would put him at risk. I had really grown to care about the big guy and I wouldn’t hear about him risking his job. All he needed to do was get me off the floor and the rest was up to me.

  Or so I thought.

  When I finally got the chance to talk to Danica, it was by phone and I had very little time for pleasantries. “There’s forty bucks in my backpack in the inner pocket. I need you to get me a fake ID. Just use my student body photograph when you go.”

  “A fake ID? Are you nuts?”

  “I will be if you don’t get me out of here.”

  “What about money?”

  “Big George is loaning me cash for a ticket, but I need an ID that says I’m eighteen.”

  “S
ame name? I mean… Jane Doe already looks like a fake ID, know what I mean?”

  I thought about my recently discovered powers and that what I felt from people was a little bit like hearing an echo. “Echo. I want my name to be Echo.”

  “Sure you haven’t already lost your mind?”

  “Funny. Echo is perfect. It suits me. Trust me on this. I am so much more of an Echo than I ever was a Jane.”

  “Fine. Echo it is. And your last name?”

  I thought about the only girl who had ever been nice to me in the foster homes I was in. “Branson.”

  “Echo Branson?”

  “Why not? I’m going to be starting a new life.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me what really happened?”

  I had written her several letters attempting to explain to her why I tried to crush Todd’s head in. I wanted her to know what I was, but I still didn’t have the words for it. It would be quite some time before I did. It’s hard to explain something you barely understand yourself.

  “But why New Orleans?”

  “There’s a…school there that specializes in my…issues.”

  “What issues?”

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I can explain it better. I’m still adjusting to the idea that I have these issues. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

  “Of course I will, she said with the warmth in her voice that made me love her. And there’s forty bucks in your backpack.”

  “Inside the small zipper pocket. Britt gave it to me before she left. She told me to spend it only when I was ready to run. I’m ready to run. Really, really fast.”

  Our time was up and I hung up knowing that she would do everything she could to make that run possible.

  Escape was easier than I thought. Once Big George got me off the floor undetected and wearing regular street clothes, I was able to walk casually out of the hospital as if I were just a visitor.

  When I reached the parking lot, I looked around for Danica. I started to panic a little, but then I saw a black Trans Am screech into the parking lot. I felt a familiar presence, but since I had no experience with my “gift,” I couldn’t really pinpoint it.

  “Need a lift?” someone asked from the car. I knew the voice as soon as I heard it.

  “Britt?”