by Anton Strout
I pulled out of the vision. Connor stared at me expectantly, his hair no longer static ridden. As reality took hold, I began to feel shaky from the toll my power had taken on my blood sugar. I snatched Connor’s sugary iced coffee out of his hand and drank it with all the table manners of Cookie Monster.
“Juice! And an iced coffee with five sugars!” Connor shouted over to the counter. When it arrived, I chugged half of it down in one gulp. Mainlining such quick sugar replenishers helped and my disorientation passed. “Easy, kid,” Connor said, patting me on the back.
“God, I hate this feeling,” I said. “Does this shit ever end?”
“You’re not the first noob I’ve instructed on this,” Connor said. “There’s always a price to be paid, kid, but with practice, it will lessen.”
“That’s a juicy little carrot to dangle before me,” I said. My hands were still shaking as I set the dispenser down. “I’m so sick of this hypoglycemia.”
Downing the rest of the juice, I attempted to further shake off some of the weariness and felt slightly better for my effort.
“Well?” Connor asked with a certain amount of boyish hopefulness. Connor was back to business. He wanted something personal from this test, but what?
“Well, it’s not part of any case we’re working on,” I said. I raised my eyes. “This is something specifically from your past, Connor.”
He kept his face poker-straight and returned the dispenser to his pocket.
“Why do you say that?”
I scrunched up my face as I tried to find the words. I explained what I had just experienced in full detail right down to the dull look on Connor’s youthful face.
When I was done, Connor chuckled. “So the dopey-looking kid is me, huh?”
“Hey,” I said defensively, “it was your mop of sandy brown hair that gave you away more than your Stepford expression. Besides, you should be thrilled these days. You’ve really outgrown that Cro-Magnon look!”
I knew that seeing the world through another’s eyes was a particularly invasive procedure and I left out how hard young Connor had cried, mostly out of kindness but also because I didn’t want to risk breaking the trust we were developing as partners. This was the first time he had ever let me use my powers on anything personal of his and it meant a lot to me.
“What about everyone else in the vision, kid?” he asked. “Tell me who they were. I need to see how accurate your power is.”
I thought for a second. “It seems obvious that the older kid must be your brother. And I’ll take a stab that the woman was your granny.”
“Why do you say that?” Connor asked.
“She did exactly what my grandmother would have done,” I said, laughing. “I was hella-accident prone.”
“All right. Good so far,” Connor said, nodding. He pulled the unidentifiable PEZ dispenser back out. “One last piece. The PEZ dispenser?”
“Easy,” I said. “Spider-man.”
He sat there looking both saddened and amazed. “Astounding,” he said. “I know we deal with these kinds of minor miracles on a regular basis, but I tell you…being on the receiving end of it, when it’s actually your life being told back to you…well, that’s a horse of a different color, kid.”
I nodded. “But I’m curious,” he continued. “You sounded unsure that we were at the Cape? Why couldn’t you tell? I mean, yes, we were, but you couldn’t tell that?”
“Not for sure,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m a passive passenger in these visions, not a driver. I’m only able to take in details of what the younger version of you specifically saw. I can’t force him to focus on any signs that might tell me where I am, but I do pay attention. Nothing screamed out ‘Cape Cod’ directly, but I remember the town of Amity from Jaws, so it seemed like a fair assumption. The way my visions happen, I can kind of fast forward and rewind them a bit, but they don’t let me be in control of what I’m allowed to see.”
“Maybe we can change that,” Connor said with encouragement.
I smiled with the tiniest hint of pride and sipped at my coffee. Feeling triumphant, I asked, “That older kid was your brother, right?”
He nodded in response but his face grew dark. Gone was the amazement of the last few minutes, replaced by the more familiar look he used when distancing himself from a case.
“I’m sorry,” I said, breaking the silence. “Is there bad blood between you two? Do you not keep in touch?”
He stared at the floor for several moments, just long enough for me to feel truly uncomfortable.
“Not really,” he said softly. “My brother and I haven’t talked in years, as a matter of fact, but it’s not what you think. It’s not like we had a falling-out or anything. He went missing about two years after that summer. It was another one of our yearly trips to the Cape, like the one you saw, and he just disappeared one day while we were all at the beach. Busy day, lots of people, and he was just gone in a heartbeat. That was the last any of us saw him. Big police investigation and everything.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry. I had no idea…”
Connor clapped me on the shoulder, reached back into his pocket, and pulled out the dispenser with a nostalgic look.
“How could you, kid? I had totally forgotten why I had kept this thing anyway. Came across it while searching for some old hex dolls. Hadn’t thought of it in years. Everything got kinda cloudy when he disappeared, you know? I’m just glad you were able to catch a glimpse of him in your vision, kid. I’d give anything to see those days again. That’s gotta be something.”
Connor had hinted at learning more about my kind of power, and now it made a bit more sense. Through teaching me, he hoped to awaken some dormant psychometric power of his own to track down his missing brother.
“Maybe I could help you manifest the power,” I said hopefully. “I even picked up one of the departmental pamphlets about recognizing the signs of psychometry in others.”
“Clairvoyance or Clair-annoyance: You Either Got It or You Don’t?” he asked. I nodded, but he shook his head. “Been there, read that, kid. It has surprisingly little to offer on whether it’s even possible for me to be taught or if it’s simply something a person is born with.”
Seeing the melancholy look on his face, I was more determined than ever.
“You never get even the tiniest of visions like these?” I asked. “No flashes, glimpses, maybe something you might have labeled as déjà vu?”
Connor shook his head. “Nothing. I guess it’s not in my area of expertise.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. “I’ll be damned if I can’t teach it to you somehow.” I paused. “So you’ve only got the one, then?”
“One what?” Connor said, confused.
“Area of expertise,” I said.
Connor nodded. “That I’m aware of. In fact, you’re sitting across from it.”
“Huh?”
Connor leaned in and whispered, “Across from you. The brunette.” He gestured toward the woman sitting on the couch next to his chair.
I tried to appear casual as I glanced her way, pretending to check out the Maltese Falcon poster on the wall behind her, and found myself staring once more at the fetching woman I had made eye contact with earlier.
Outside of her natural beauty, I saw nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Great skin, smartly dressed in black pants and a dark brown leather blazer. I judged her to be in her late twenties with an elegance that radiated from porcelain-like features perfectly framed by a river of wavy brown hair. Luckily, she wasn’t looking directly at me this time. I congratulated myself for stealthily sneaking a peek at her and avoiding any awkwardness. I leaned across the table toward Connor.
“Women are your expertise?” I whispered. “What about her?”
“Oh,” Connor said matter-of-factly, picking up his iced coffee and taking a lengthy sip, “she’s dead.”
5
I often imagined how cool my life would be if I were in a movie. I
would say all the right things and have all the right reactions in any given situation. Most importantly, I would no doubt be as cool as I have always imagined myself, but at that moment in the Lovecraft Café, I found that reality was having no part of my delusions. As soon as Connor mentioned that the brunette was dead, I felt a chill run up my spine and I literally jumped straight out of my chair. Apparently, I had taken the remedial Deadside Manner: Staying Cool in Troubled Times seminar for nothing. I helplessly watched myself with the same type of slow-motion detail that I used in my visions.
My foot caught the edge of the coffee table, causing an alarming clatter of cups as it began to flip over (-1 to me for causing a commotion). I started to fall, but not before my replacement coat billowed out around me like bat wings while I spun out of control (-2 for appearing spastic). As I fell back, I accidentally kicked Connor’s coffee right out of his hand (-3 for punting my partner’s drink).
That’s when things got weird.
The delicious beverage flew through the air, sailing toward the woman on the sofa, but instead of splashing all over her (regularly a -4 offense), it passed straight through her (with no previous scale to judge it on, I’d have to give it a -8 million at least). Oddly enough, she didn’t seem to notice, but suddenly I could see what was wrong with her. Now that I was looking at her closely, she was semitransparent. I could see the plastic cup resting inside her form against the back of the sofa, its contents sloshed all over. The woman seemed to become slowly aware that something was going on, but the look of confusion on her face told me she wasn’t quite sure what exactly had happened. She glanced back and forth between Connor and me, searching our faces in silence. Connor broke the tension in a way I was getting used to—he yelled at me.
“Simon!” he shouted. He grabbed a napkin from the table and beginning dabbing the area around the woman without actually reaching through her.
She stared at me and I shrugged sheepishly, and then we both looked to Connor.
“I’m sorry about what the kid did there,” Connor said, continuing to clean around her. “I know this must all come as quite a shock to you, the way things tend to phase through your semicorporeal form. Being dead and all…”
A look of absolute confusion spread across her face.
“Dead and all…?” she repeated. Her voice was quiet but refined.
She looked around quickly to see if perhaps Connor was talking to someone else. Finding no one there, she turned to me. “Who’s dead?”
“Oh crap,” I said. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights. “Connor, you want to field this one?”
I looked to Connor for help, but he was too busy scooping ice cubes off the mauve sofa back into his glass. I felt absolutely useless in the situation. I had enough trouble talking to living women. All I could do was smile and stare. Here was this beautiful—but clearly deceased—woman sitting across from me, and she was seemingly unaware of her situation. How could she not realize she was dead, especially after a coffee cup had passed straight through her?
I had to say something, though. “Who’s dead?” I repeated. “Well…you are.”
The woman’s face scrunched up in immediate disbelief. She laughed.
“Oh, I don’t think so!” she said. Then, with total conviction, “No, absolutely not.”
“Hrmh,” Connor said. He stopped cleaning up the spill and finally turned his full attention on us. “I think we may have a problem here.”
“What sort of problem?” the woman asked, nervousness creeping into her voice. “The spill? It’s nothing, really. I’m sure a good dry cleaner will be able to get the stain out. If you’d be kind enough to pick up the dry cleaning bill, I’m sure everything will be—”
“Look at your clothes,” Connor said abruptly.
The woman looked as if she had been slapped in the face.
“Excuse me?” she said.
I found myself taken aback by his interruption, surprised by the gruffness of it. He certainly could have handled it with a gentler tone, but remembering that the deceased were his bailiwick, I held my tongue and let him work.
“Just…” Connor said, exasperated, “just take a look, okay? Humor me.”
The woman looked down at her outfit, and her eyes widened as she finally noticed what Connor was talking about. Her body was even more transparent than before and I could see the entire couch through her now. The area on the couch where Connor courteously hadn’t reached through her to wipe was still covered with ice, coffee, and whipped cream. Her outfit, however, was spotless, untouched by even a drop of the drink. She grabbed for the pile of ice sitting inside her but her ghostly hand phased straight through the mess. “Oh…my…”
Connor and I waited in silence as we watched the realization set in. Connor’s mood had changed from moments before. His early morning tedium—another day of pencil-pushing at the office—had just gotten interesting. This mysterious apparition wasn’t acting according to the book, whatever arcane text that might be…probably 50 Hauntful Tips for the Helpless.
Connor turned to Mrs. Teasley nearby and chuckled. “You see, Mrs. T? Here’s the ‘unexpected visitor’ you mentioned.” He turned to me and whispered, “The old broad may not see too far in the future, kid, but at least she still keeps the ball in the park. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, huh?”
I worried that the people around us might have noticed the cup go flying through the woman and I checked the rest of the coffee shop. Normal customers who had simply stopped in for a cup of coffee, a stale muffin, and nothing paranormal had momentarily turned their attention toward us, but only because of the noise from kicking over the table. Everyone had quickly turned back to their conversations. Had I remembered my training better, it made perfect sense. The Department’s orientation pamphlet, D.E.A. or DOA: Your Choice, stated that most regular folk were ill equipped for dealing with this sort of supernatural situation. Yes, they sensed something out of the ordinary, but their minds were protective of their sanity and made them happily oblivious to things such as this woman’s unlivingness. If I polled them about what was wrong, they simply wouldn’t be able to put their finger on it. Instead, they would grumble about how crumbly the muffins were or that their coffee needed freshening up. Nothing out of the ordinary for them, thanks.
“Maybe we better take this out back?” I suggested. Connor nodded.
“Miss?” Connor asked. The woman was flustered and paid him no attention. Despite the oddness of her circumstance, she was desperately trying to keep her composure.
Admittedly, I was, too. The only thing that made sense right now was taking this situation out of the front room of the Lovecraft Café. It was perhaps the best idea I had come up with during the entire encounter. Things would be better once we were out back in the Department’s offices.
Being the well-meaning gentleman that I am these days, I tried to help the woman up from the couch by taking her arm. My hand passed effortlessly through it and a shock tingled through my fingers, startling her. Connor shot me a look.
“Please don’t do that,” he warned.
“Why not?”
“Because you might force me to say ‘please don’t do that’ again,” he said, agitated.
“Oh.”
I had never experienced such a sensation before. My fingers continued to tingle as if they were charged with electricity. In the reflection of the glass covering a Bogart poster on the wall, I checked my hair to make sure that I hadn’t suddenly become a member of the White Stripes. Luckily, I was fine.
I turned my attention back to the situation. Connor finally caught the woman’s eye. He smiled purse-lipped at her. “Yes, hello? Hi, could you tell me your name, please?”
My heart softened as she attempted to smile back despite the obvious stress this situation caused her.
“It’s Irene…I think.”
Connor looked at me and lowered his voice. “Not good. Memory displacement’s already set in.” He turned back to her. “Hello, Iren
e. My name is Connor Christos and my young colleague here is Simon Canderous.”
“I’m not that young,” I mumbled. Connor shot me another glare and I fell silent. Now was not the time to be glib, apparently.
“If you’d just follow us back to our offices,” he said, “I think that I or one of our other ‘guidance’ counselors can help make sense out of everything you’re experiencing.”
Irene cocked her head, distrustful. She looked far from convinced, and I didn’t blame her. How would I react to being told that I was dead? Probably far worse than she was.
“We’re here to help,” Connor said with a smile. “Honest.”
He reached into his right pocket and pulled out a small vial like the one from the other night, and twisted its stopper free with a well-practiced motion. I watched as the same smoky haze rose from the vial and twisted dreamily around Irene’s head. The familiar smell of patchouli and cloves hit my nostrils, and the woman’s face went slack. She rose from the couch like smoke rising from a fire. Just like that, Connor took control of her.
Connor’s approach bordered on wrangling her like cattle, and I wanted to speak up—but what was I really prepared to say? None of the departmental seminars or brochures had covered this, and my own training had yet to cover the shaky legal gray area of spirits’ rights. Wasn’t Connor somehow violating those, coercing Irene by magical means? Before I could give it another thought, Connor turned away and led our brown-haired beauty toward the back of the coffee shop. I stumbled my way over the upturned coffee table and followed. The counter jockey scowled at me for leaving the mess, but I pointed to Connor and the ghost, shrugging as if to say, Whatcha gonna do?
