The child sat turning the tiers of the colored cube to the right, and to the left, oblivious to his parents’ front seat discussion. But now with this strange gift of returned time, Sidney was able to hear what he’d missed, misunderstood, or simply ignored. He gazed out the window while he listened, watching winter’s bare trees pass one after another out of sight.
“What do you think is going to make this shrink any different? You think she is going to say something that the rest of them haven’t?” His father’s voice was pressing toward his mother, yet it remained calm, subdued in censorship because of the child in the backseat.
“It’s worth a shot, Michael,” his mother said, quietly. “There is more to this than what we originally thought.”
“I thought we were in agreement that this was all part of his overactive imagination? That’s what the other doctors said.”
“We were in agreement, Michael. That was before he started mentioning people he would have no way of knowing about.”
“Come on, Cindy. We had to have mentioned those people at sometime—”
“No, we did not! I want to know how, and why, he is able to know or hear certain things, and these doctors haven’t given us anything that satisfies me.”
They had been talking about the time when he’d mentioned hearing one of their high-school friends who had passed on, as well as a distant cousin. He also spoke out on things that only Mom and Dad would’ve known, like the miscarriage his mother suffered before his birth. They had never told Sidney he would have had an older sibling, but he knew, and it disturbed his mother.
The elder Sidney saw his father’s quick glance into the backseat to make sure the child had been occupied.
“Maybe he’s just a whack job, like your brother.”
“Michael! I don’t want you saying things like that in front of him, or her, for that matter. She is a highly esteemed psychiatrist; she will blame the whole thing on us.”
Now, Sidney remembered. He recalled hearing that last part of the conversation long ago, but he hadn’t understood. Why would the doctor blame Mom and Dad? He’d asked himself that question at the time, and the answer was much clearer now. This was the day they’d taken him to see the esteemed female psychiatrist—Dr. Susan Logan.
* * * *
They’d been sitting in her office when he’d met her the first time. She’d been in her forties then, youthful in appearance, blond hair and blue eyes, and a friendly, feminine voice. She had asked Sidney various questions: how he liked school, his friends, and the time he spent with Grandpa; she asked what he wanted to be. Then she asked about the voices.
He told her about the time he’d first heard his grandfather, and about the deafness, how he couldn’t hear anything else when it happened. Some fleeting, changing expression on her face silently told Sidney that he’d broken through to her, that possibly, Dr. Logan might believe him.
She’d ordered more sessions with him, and now, as he watched each one of them over again, they strangely seemed part of the same sequence, as though they were all one occasion. His parents had mentioned a word to her that he did not understand—schizophrenic. But he understood enough to know that it had something to do with hearing voices that weren’t there. The voices he’d heard were there, and he could prove it.
“I sincerely doubt that,” Dr. Logan had said. “That condition is extremely rare in children, and besides, Sidney lacks all of the other symptoms; he is otherwise a perfectly well-behaved, rational, happy boy. There is a joyful contentment inside Sidney that is not present in those with the condition you just mentioned, but I still want to go a little further with him.”
The collage of sequenced events mixed together and soon, Susan Logan was trying to retrieve from him a confession through an aggressive, verbal onslaught. Susan had later told him she’d been testing his sincerity under pressure.
“Did you really hear your Grandfather, Sidney? Tell us, really? Couldn’t it have been all in your mind? It was wasn’t it? You heard what you wanted to hear, Sidney, and you exaggerated the rest. Am I right? Tell us!”
“No,” he’d said, confidently.
“You know what they say about people who say such things, don’t you, Sidney? Now, tell me the truth. This is upsetting your parents to no end—”
That was the moment where she continued to speak, but no sound came from her mouth, as he looked her straight in the face. He heard sounds of gunfire, like the war movies Grandpa had watched on TV, and then a man’s voice spoke...
“Call her Suzy Q, and tell her Mark loves her.”
The deafness died away, and the older Sidney watched for the reaction on Susan Logan’s face for the second time in history, knowing what the child would reveal to her.
“Sidney, what’s wrong?” She asked the child.
“Mark says he loves you, Suzy Q.”
Her reaction was exactly as he remembered it: her face dropping and draining of color, the paleness overshadowing her rouge, and big blue eyes widening as her mouth opened in a speechless stupor. He turned in time to catch a similar expression on his mother’s face, which bore the perfect combination of fright and ignorance. And then Mom and Dad’s eyes had met, locking in terror, confusion.
He remembered the long silence that had followed this revelation, edgy and unnerving, filling the room. For just a moment his focus strayed from the visions as something twinged inside of him after hearing Mark’s voice a second time. The voice, like everything else in this odd state of being, was familiar—closely familiar. But then again, he had heard the voice many years ago, and it seemed as though it had never left him. It was also different somehow, just like the boy, not one of the dead, but how could that be?
Susan’s voice broke the stringent silence in the recreation of that moment.
“Mr. and Mrs. Pratt, may I see you for a moment, outside?”
The scene changed again to a one-on-one session with Susan, without his parents, and just the two of them sat in her office.
“What do you know about him, Sidney? Tell me.”
“Nothing,” he’d said. “I just heard gunfire, you know, like in war movies, and he talked to me. He said he loves you, and he told me to call you, ‘Suzy Q.’”
Her eyebrows rose upward, expressing the pointed painful arch of a broken, bleeding heart. An unconscious murmur muttered beneath her breath.
“So, he is dead?” She caught herself and looked up at her young patient. “Can you speak with him now, Sidney? What else did he tell you?” Her questions became incessant, and even now, he could still see that determined, obsessed look in her blue eyes.
In an instant flash, he was back inside the house, and his parents were arguing.
“I’m telling you, I don’t like her!” His father yelled at his mother, whose demeanor was still clearly shaken by the episode in Susan’s office. Sidney could see her hands quivering, and the watchful look of fear hadn’t left her eyes.
“Michael, I’m scared. I’m terrified of whatever this is. Whatever this ability our son has, I want it gone!” His mother clutched both hands together, the way she always did, silently praying her wishes to prevail.
“I’m not so sure I want to know,” his father said. “And besides, do you think she is going to label him as ‘gifted?’ Hell no! She will make a project out of our son, and soon enough, she will call him crazy! Is that what you want, Cindy? Is it? Like it isn’t bad enough that people are already talking!”
She had started to cry, her hand reaching for her forehead in hopelessness.
“Listen, maybe this thing will go away. We will take him to church with us, Cindy. It’s how we were raised. ‘Ask and ye shall receive,’ it says, and that’s what we’ll do. We will just pray that God takes this thing away from him.” He pulled her toward him, clutching and holding her, his voice reassuring, but unconvinced himself.
And then the memories of attending church with them passed in a series of various images like a slideshow. He enjoyed going to church
; he’d always felt safe there, comforted. Mom and Dad hadn’t mentioned his ability for a while during this time; they just kept silent, cautious that he had said no more about it and grateful that he was attending church with them.
The next vision showed him at the age of sixteen, when he’d finally revealed to his parents that he was still hearing his grandfather—and others. That was when all of the lively dinner conversations, the family fun, the hugs, the warmth, the compromise, had all died away. Michael and Cindy’s son was not what they had dreamed and hoped, and their prayers for his detestable talent to dissipate had fallen on divinely deaf ears. This thing that possessed him was not right; they wanted no part of it, and so they’d erected a wall of silence between them and their son.
He saw visions of these years where he’d studied hard, day and night, acing exams one right after another. Then came the day in his senior year when he was notified of his full-scholarship acceptance at the university; at last, he would be out of this house, free of parents who treated him as an outsider and a freak with their continued silence.
They did help him move from the house to his dorm, and that day he could almost feel the relief that exuded from them. They were free to live their lives without fear and embarrassment, yet Sidney was free to explore who he really was and be able to understand this thing from a rational, academic standpoint.
He excelled at the university, as expected, and soon learned of the paranormal investigative society that had made quite a reputable name for itself through its research and progress in paranormal investigations. What would they think of him? Would they understand what he was, or were they a bunch of ghost groupies, wasting valuable time on fruitless expeditions, jumping at every sound they heard, and attributing such noises to the dead? The solid reputation that preceded them certainly didn’t correspond to that idea.
Still, he would try not to shock them.
He watched himself apprehensively knocking on the door of Room 208; it was the first time he had met Dylan Rasche and Brett Taylor. After a voice had bid him entry, he opened the heavy door and found the two young men seated around one of the television screens, viewing a video. They had been heavy in conversation and light in laughter, of which he’d awkwardly interrupted.
“Hi, is this the paranormal investigative society?” His voice sounded low, timid.
The tall young man with the curly, black hair, slightly older than himself, stood up from his chair to greet him.
“Yes. Hello, I’m Dylan Rasche,” he’d said, shaking his hand. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I’m Sidney Pratt. I’m a newly arrived freshman...and...Well, I was kind of interested in your group.” Sidney felt the need to get to know them first before springing his ability on them. If they were phonies, the last thing he needed was the attention, the whole campus regarding him as a rarity, and life continuing much as it had at home.
He looked around the room as he said this, seeing the vast array of technical apparatus: televisions, computers, video cameras, and devices he had never seen before.
All of it looked expensive, high-tech, and something assured him that this assortment of costly equipment belonged only to serious ghost hunters.
The other young man with the long, shoulder-length hair and green army jacket also stood to greet him.
“I’m Brett Taylor,” he said, also shaking Sidney’s hand.
“Well, welcome, Sidney,” Dylan continued. “Now that you’ve met both of us, please have a seat. Let us tell you what we’re about.”
“So is it just you two guys?” Sidney asked, having glanced around the room, not seeing anyone else.
“Well, no,” Brett said. “Sometimes we have classes that study with us, some people have come and gone, and sometimes we have volunteers and researchers, but it is the two of us who run and maintain this little operation.”
“There is also a board of directors that sponsors our society,” Dylan added. “They rarely intervene with our investigations; we just keep them posted on our research, progress, etc. So tell me, Sidney, what brings you here? Have you ever had any paranormal experiences? It’s usually personal experience that brings interested parties to us. What is it for you, Sidney?”
There it was and so early. He wished he could have waited, but they asked. He thought of the best way to begin, the most articulate way to describe, when unexpectedly, the deafness overcame him. He knew what was happening, and his mouth must have dropped because the two young men sat up further in their chairs and stared at him.
And one of the unknown dead spoke...
“The young man who needs a haircut calls me Aunt Viv— you can too. Tell him I’m watching. Tell him to take care of Uncle Jack.”
She’d sounded content, almost enlightened. His ears had popped as they usually did when his hearing returned. He looked at them, especially Brett; the concern on their faces revealed that they had noticed something.
It was now or never. He took a deep breath while continuing to stare at Brett, who instinctively drew closer to him. Then Sidney let him have it...
“Your Aunt Viv says to get your hair cut.”
Brett’s face blanched a sickly pale, and his brown eyes stared endlessly in shock. Physically, his upper body bucked backward, as if the astonishment had dealt a blow to his chest. He looked at Dylan, then back at Sidney, who continued.
“She says to make sure you take care of Uncle Jack for her.”
Brett hung his head down with a gasp and tightened his eyes shut, forcing back the forging painful tears that threatened his already bewildered demeanor. He looked back at Dylan again, who’d kept his eyes on Sidney as he spoke.
“He’s a clairaudient.”
It was the first time Sidney had ever heard the word.
Brett explained that his Aunt Vivian and Uncle Jack had raised him after being given up by his teenage mother, who was unable to care for him at such a young age. Aunt Viv and Uncle Jack, the only parents he’d ever known, had adopted him. Aunt Vivian had died five years ago of heart failure.
“She says she’s watching you.” Sidney had tried to sound consoling, reassuring.
“Sidney, how long have you had this ability?” Dylan asked, as his eyes locked in fascination at the marvel that had walked through the door.
“I first noticed it after my grandfather died; I was only five at the time.”
In this vision, he had been an eighteen-year-old college freshman, and he watched as his younger self explained the details that had followed his grandfather’s death, comfortable that they would understand. The looks on their faces were attentive, absorbed, almost infatuated, and he’d sat back in unspoken relief.
“You called me something a minute ago,” Sidney said to Dylan. “What was it?”
“A clairaudient,” Dylan said. “I assume you are unaware of what that means?”
Sidney shrugged his shoulders; Dylan continued...
“Clairaudients are individuals who can hear the voices of the dead. I’m sure you’re aware of that much.”
Sidney was stunned by this confirmation, but still, he nodded.
“Much like clairvoyants can see the future, and some see the dead, clairaudients can hear the dead speak. Often spirits are aware that the clairaudient, or the listener, can hear them; something about that person attracts them so they speak, knowing the listener will hear them.”
Dylan spoke with an apparent wealth of paranormal knowledge and experience, but still, Sidney felt the need to explain.
“But sometimes, I don’t always hear a spirit as strongly as I can hear my grandfather, or as clearly as I heard Brett’s aunt. Sometimes, there are only words or broken sentences, and sometimes the voices overlap, and it’s hard to hear exactly what they’re saying.”
“Yes,” Dylan said. “That is because that particular spirit is not strong enough to communicate as well as others. Usually, clairaudients hear the voices of loved ones more precisely, even random spirits if the person meant
for the message is present, as Brett was. The overlapping voices occur when several spirits communicate simultaneously.
“Some clairaudients even possess a stronger ability than that; some can hear the voices of the living from other locations, sometimes miles away, a feat called ‘remote hearing.’ Often, clairaudients are misdiagnosed as schizophrenics. Your ability, Sidney, is a form of telepathy, though not manifested in the mind-reading sense.
The elder Sidney watched and remembered how his mind was reeling from the clarification of what he was, and what he wasn’t. He’d felt vindicated. Susan Logan had been right; he wasn’t crazy, but something about that conclusion made the situation somewhat darker.
“Sidney, what you have is a rare gift, though not unheard of. Those who are able to hear the dead are mentioned as far back as the Bible. As I said, there are people in the world that can see the dead, and there are some that can hear them; they are individuals with an authentic, psychic gift that the world has not yet come to understand.”
He remembered being caught off-guard by the biblical mention and wishing his parents would have been there to hear it. How he longed to see the expressions that would’ve appeared on their faces. Had his parents known all along about clairaudients, given the biblical mention? Was that why they had stopped him from seeing Susan? He continued to watch the younger renditions of himself, Dylan, and Brett, in what had been a day of great revelation and discovery.
He’d gone on to tell them about Susan Logan, though he hadn’t mentioned her by name. When they’d asked about his family, he was honest.
“Being an only child can be rough, lonely,” Brett volunteered. “I loved Aunt Viv and I love Uncle Jack endlessly, but I know what it’s like to be the only child. To live with this ability in addition to that couldn’t have been easy. I feel for you, Sidney.”
“There are many parents,” Dylan said, “who are terrified by their child’s psychic ability, who don’t understand, who are somehow threatened by it. Unfortunately, those parents often alienate their child out of their fear. Please know in your heart, Sidney, that it’s that fear that keeps them from you.”
The Listener Page 8
