Crowley's Window (Novella)

by Gord Rollo

  Anything to keep the girl quiet, right? Cry out, Trisha. Do something. Dig your heels in and start screaming. Stop dammit!

  As they hurried past Abby’s line of vision, and she tried to get a good look at the kidnapper, her psychic connection to this location started to slip. No. Not yet! Abby fought to stay focused but it was no use. She was being drawn into the air and pulled back toward her waiting body. Just before she lost the vision completely, a black and white Westchester Police car drove into sight, pulling up to the main entrance. No sirens were blaring; not yet anyway, and the police could be arriving at the carnival for any number of reasons, but Abby caught a last second vibe from them as she passed overhead and knew the little girl had already been reported missing. The cops had been close by, patrolling the area all night in fact, knowing there was always some sort of trouble at the carnival every year. The two police officers climbed out of their squad car and…

  Everything went dark.

  “She’s right behind you,” Abby screamed, trying to contact the policemen and not yet fully aware she was back in her physical body again, inside the circus tent. Panic hit her hard, the way it always did when the visions faded. The horrible claustrophobic realization of being blind washed over her again, suffocating her in its dark embrace but there was no time for a pity party right now. She had to try and help Trisha. Neither the police nor her parents had any idea the child had already been swept away.

  Unless Abby warned them.

  “Who you talking to?” Charlie Jensen asked. “Us? There’s no one behind us. Umm…are you okay, Miss?”

  Shit! Abby had forgotten all about the customers she’d been with. Now they’d really think she was crazy. “Listen guys, I have to ask you to leave. I’m…I’m not feeling well so if you could just—”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Ray said. “You ain’t sneaking away that easily. I paid my money and I want what’s coming to me.”

  “Look, another time, okay?” Abby stood up and started moving carefully toward the tent door. “I have to go. It’s an emergency!”

  She was nearly out of the room when Ray grabbed her and roughly spun her around to face him. “You owe me a reading, lady, and you ain’t leaving until I get it.”

  “Stop it, Ray,” Charlie tried to intervene. “What the hell are you doing? You’ll get us in trouble.”

  “Screw that, man. I’m sick of this shit. We paid good money to see nothing but crap. This slut ain’t even blind…look!” Ray reached up and before Abby could stop him, ripped off the purple cloth she kept wrapped around her missing eyes. Ray got a close up view of her empty eye sockets, partially covered with what was left of her sagging eye lid skin, and gasped in shock.

  “Oh my God!” Charlie said, standing near his brother. “She really doesn’t have any eyes. Fuck me!”

  Finding his bravado again, Ray said, “Yeah, but she still owes me something, right FREAK?”

  Abby’s blood began to boil. Every second that went by, the odds of finding Trisha got worse, and this damn fool was demanding a performance. No problem. If that’s what the jackass wanted, that’s what he was going to get. Abby touched him with her left hand. “You wanna know what I see? I see you hunched over in your bedroom closet peeking through that little hole you made in the wall between your room and your mother’s. I see you pulling that tiny thing you have hanging between your legs as you watch your mom undressing at night. You’re a real hero, Ray; now get the fuck out of my way.”

  Stunned into silence for perhaps the first time in his life, Ray Jensen let her go and stepped to the side. Seizing the opportunity, Abby bolted from the tent.

  * * *

  Nearly an hour had passed and the only thing that was abundantly clear to everyone was that the little girl, Trisha Martin, was gone. Who had taken her, why they’d done it, or where they had disappeared to so quickly no one had any clue, but just like in every small town the rumors were already starting to fly. Nosey people, who were milling around the circus tent and trying not to appear quite as interested as they obviously were, whispered possible explanations among themselves from the sensible to the completely moronic while watching the police try to get information from Trisha’s understandably frantic parents. Abby had heard the abductor was everything from a child rapist, to a serial killer, to a disgruntled person who’d been denied several attempts at legally adopting a child. Some of the more reasonable people seemed to believe the girl had simple wandered off on her own or was perhaps angry with her parents and trying to run away. Just because she was missing, they argued, didn’t necessarily mean anything drastically bad had happened to her. It was still way too early for that assumption.

  In fact, the only person so far who’d claimed the girl had been abducted with any real conviction was Abby herself, who’d burst out of the Sideshow Curiosities tent screaming for the policemen to search the parking lot immediately. By the time they’d calmed her down enough to get her story straight and realize she was dead serious, they’d been too late to find the girl. Who could blame them though? What else were they supposed to think seeing a hysterical blind woman staggering toward them dressed like some sort of modern day gypsy yelling at the top of her lungs that she’d just had a psychic vision of a girl being led away from the carnival by a man with a knife? Officers Beck and Tanner made Abby promise she’d go back into her tent and wait for them to question her later, and reluctantly she’s agreed. Anything to get their asses moving toward the parking lot.

  By the time they finally arrived, panic was hitting the small town of Westchester outside the tent, but Abby had managed to reign in her emotions and was sitting calmly at her table, slowly rubbing her crystal ball when Beck and Tanner walked into the room. She’d taken the time to replace her purple tie covering her eye sockets and waved them to two chairs in front of her.

  “I’m Officer Tanner and this is my partner, Officer Beck. Sorry it took us so long, ma’am. We wanted to make sure we’d searched everywhere.” It was an older man’s voice, gruff and obviously someone who’d been smoking for many years.

  “You’ve given up, already?”

  “Course not. Our back-up is still out there, along with half the town, but we’re starting to believe you that she’s been taken against her will. We found an uneaten lollipop at the far end of the parking lot and a red hair ribbon near it that the Martin’s say looks like one their daughter had in her hair.”

  Abby held up both her hands, palm facing out toward her guests. She knew from experience they’d be wondering what she was up to and be a little unsettled seeing the blue and green eye tats but she didn’t care. She hated being in the dark and wanted a glimpse of the men she was talking too—even if it was just a quick succession of shadow-shrouded mental images that came from her enhanced psychic powers more than from the tattoos inked into her hands. The eyes were just symbolic; a way for Abby to focus her cerebral camera long enough to get a peek at the world around her. The pictures she received were nothing like the vivid images in her full-sensory visions but they were much better than being trapped within the jet black walls of her blindness.

  Abby saw two similar sized policemen in front of her, although seated it was impossible to tell how tall the men were. Both were of average to muscular builds but the older man had a bit of a beer belly hanging over his belt and his short cropped hair was going gray/white at the sides. The younger man, Beck, was handsome in a rugged farm boy kind of way, with short black hair and big strong hands resting on the table in front of him. Tanner nudged his partner as if to say, What the hell’s she doing? Beck only shrugged, just as confused as his partner.

  “Don’t worry, guys. I’m just having a little look around.” This comment made the men even more baffled but Officer Beck tried to get the conversation back on track.

  “Ahh…no offense ma’am, but—”

  “My real name’s Abby. Abigail Hawkins if you need it for your report. Around here they call me Aurora. I’d prefer either of those to ma’am if you do
n’t mind. Makes me feel old, you know?”

  “Fair enough,” Beck said, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. “No offense then, Abby, but we need to know if you’re really blind or not? I mean, the posters say you are, and you’re here wearing a blindfold but everything you tell us points to you being able to see. What’s the deal?”

  “Yeah,” Tanner said. “If you’re running a scam on the public, that’s all fine and dandy, but we need—”

  “I’ve been blind for six years. My eyes had to be removed after the doctors found cancerous growths on them and my optic nerves. The pressure of the growths were pressing on my brain and giving me massive headaches and wild hallucinations. I had a high fever that nearly killed me and I don’t really remember much about that week but when I finally woke up, my headaches were gone but so were my eyes. It sucks, sure, but I get by without them.”

  “Why you wasting our time then?” Tanner asked. “You told us you saw that little girl being taken away.”

  “I did. I was sitting right here with some customers and all of a sudden I had a vision of the little girl being led out the main entrance by a tall man with a knife on his belt. He was walking her toward the parking lot and I just knew—”

  “A vision?” Tanner interrupted. “The hell you talking about? In your head? In your crystal fucking ball? Who do you think you are, the Amazin’ Kreskin?”

  Abby could feel the tension building in the room, the policeman’s anger starting to simmer closer to the surface. “I don’t know who that is, but if they’re psychic than yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Psychic! Oh shit.” Officer Tanner stood up to leave. “Listen lady, we don’t have time for bullshit tonight. Come on, Beck…let’s go.”

  “Think I’ll stay and hear her out, if that’s okay? We gotta put something in the report and so far she’s the only lead we have, right?”

  Tanner replied as if Abby wasn’t even there, as if she was deaf as well as blind and couldn’t hear his insults. Either that or the older cop just didn’t give a damn whether she heard him or not.

  “Wrong. She’s a nutcase, maybe, or a publicity hound but definitely not a bloody lead. You do what you want, but I’m out of here. I have some real police work to do. Psychic visions…my ass!”

  Officer Tanner stormed out of the tent without another word and most of the tension in the room went with him. Both Abby and Officer Beck sighed with relief that he was gone, and that made Abby laugh out loud.

  “Nice partner. Very open-minded, isn’t he?”

  “Obviously not. Sorry about that. He’s just worried about the little girl. We all are. This kind of thing doesn’t happen here. In the big cities, sure, but not here in Westchester. Everyone’s in a sour mood.”

  “I know. It doesn’t bother me. I’m more than used to people not believing in my abilities, officer.”

  “Call me David. And whether it matters or not, I believe you.”

  His response honestly surprised Abby, and she held up her hands to see if he was smirking at her, playing her for the fool. Beck wasn’t, sitting forward in his chair, all business. “Seriously? This isn’t a good cop, bad cop thing, is it?”

  “Nope. My grandmother was psychic. No one believed her either, but I lived with her after my mother died and I saw firsthand all the things she could do. The first week I was there, my dog Cody ran away and all she had to do was touch his leash hanging by the door and she somehow knew he was hurt over by the railway tracks near Miller’s pond, the place I use to take him when I went fishing. She drove me over there and sure enough, Cody was lying in the gravel beside the tracks with a broken front leg where he’d stepped in a hole and snapped it heading for where we used to sit. I think he’d gotten lost and gone there looking for me, but without Grandma I’d have never found him in time to get him to the vet. From that day on, I never questioned my Grandmother’s talents. I didn’t understand them, like I don’t understand yours, but I believe in them. Hope that makes some sense.”

  “Perfect sense,” Abby said, smiling, thrilled to have met someone that actually understood a little bit about the things she had to normally hide from the world to keep from being publicly ridiculed. She couldn’t help but notice again how handsome the young police officer was but that wasn’t a line of thought she wanted to follow, so instead she just said, “Thanks for sharing that with me. After what just happened, I needed to hear it.”

  “You’re welcome. Now tell me what you saw in your vision.”

  Abby told him everything she could remember, from the time the Jensen Brothers had walked into her tent to the time she’d gone running outside to flag down David and his partner, trying her best to describe things as exact as possible, not wanting to leave anything important out.

  “But what about the man, Abby? I need to know who he was. Surely you got a good look at him as well?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I don’t know why. I think I was concentrating so hard on Trisha I didn’t even look at him until they were basically past me. My visions tend to focus in on one main life force, meaning the girl in this case. I zone out a bit sometimes on other details, sorry.”

  “That’s okay. It’s amazing you were able to see what you did. Miraculous even!”

  “Thanks. The guy was tall, I remember that much. Dark hair for sure, but I don’t know if it was long or cropped short. When I glanced at him, what caught my attention was his knife. It was a big hunting knife, huge really, and he wore it strapped on his belt in one of those leather sheaths. Know what I mean? By the time I went to look closer at him, they were by me and heading into the parking lot. Probably not much help.”

  “Sure it is. You kidding? It’s a huge help. I just hope we can find her soon, before it’s too late. Abductions like these rarely have a happy ending but I hope I’m wrong. Time will tell, I guess. I’d better go find my partner.”

  “Teach him some manners for me, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” David said. “No promises he’ll listen, though.”

  An awkward, silence filled the tent, Abby expecting David to get up and leave but part of her wishing he wouldn’t. His presence made her feel safe, and to be honest, he made her feel other things too, feelings she was trying hard not to think about because there was no way a big handsome man like this was interested in a weirdo disabled girl like her. It was crazy to even entertain the thought. Wasn’t it? Maybe, but Officer Beck was still sitting across from her, seemingly reluctant to leave as well.

  “Are you married?” Abby asked before she could stop the words from exiting her mouth. She was horrified she’d actually been so bold, but now that the question was out there, a dormant part of her heart was definitely interested in hearing the answer.

  After a long pause, David said, “Ahh…no. Why?”

  Heat ignited Abby’s face as she blushed like a schoolgirl. “Oh, no reason. Just curious I guess.”

  “Oh…okay. Well, I’d better go find Tanner. He’ll shoot me for taking so long. Listen, if I have ahh…anymore questions, is it okay if I come back and see you?”

  “Absolutely,” Abby said, still blushing. Feeling bold, she added, “I’d like that a lot.” She reached across the table, presumably to shake his hand goodbye but secretly so she could touch David and find out a little more about him using her powers. She fully expected to get nothing but a warm fuzzy glow from his touch to add to the little fantasy she was building, but once their hands touched she was completely unprepared for the sensations and images that rushed into her mind like a frigid winter wind. Abby gasped and pulled her hand away.

  “You’re a liar.” It was a statement, not a question. “You’re married to a woman named Beth and not only that, but you’re cheating on her with a girl named Sally. Why would you lie to me?”

  Abby knew she had no right to ask that question; Officer Beck certainly didn’t owe her anything, but she was shocked to learn the truth.

  And more than a little bit disappointed.

 
“Oh my God! No Abby…it’s not like that. Well, it is, but that’s not what I mean. My…my wife and I don’t get along. We haven’t had a real marriage right from the start. And Sally…she and I aren’t seeing each other. We’re just…just—”

  “Just fucking each other!” Abby said, her voice cold and full of hurt. “I know. I saw it all. You better get back to work, officer. I hope you find that poor little girl.”

  Abby could tell David wanted to say something, wanted to explain himself but she was finished listening to him. He was no different than all the other men who’d come into her life. They were all liars and cheats, but none of them could fool her for long. It was better to be lonely than to have someone walk all over her. Not that this one had even expressed interest in being a part of her life, but for a few minutes it had certainly seemed that way. Abby folded her arms and waited for him to leave. Eventually he did, but not before pausing at the door for a long moment and saying, “I’m sorry, Abby.”

  * * *

  It was 11:00 p.m. and everyone—police, media, and the ghouls from the public who’d hung around for hours hoping to see or hear something juicy—had finally gone home. Normally there would still be activity on the grounds, with clean-up crews busy picking up garbage, vendors restocking their prizes or food booths, and the bean counters going over the receipts and adding up the day’s take. Not tonight though. Tonight, everything was quiet. The only people left on the carnival grounds were the carnies themselves; all gathered in small groups talking quietly about the strange events of the night and wondering what it might mean for business and their livelihood in the days and weeks to come.

  Abby wasn’t in the mood for a group hug and at the moment didn’t give a damn what happened to the carnival’s profit line. Something important was on her mind and even though it was late and she was totally exhausted, there was something she had to do before going to bed. Someone she had to talk to before she could rest in peace.