The Ice Scream Man

by Salmon, J. F.

  Colour began to seep back into Kate’s cheeks.

  “Maybe we should report this to the police, if you feel up to it.”

  Kate shook her head almost immediately; it was the last thing she wanted to do, then Mum and Dad would find out. “I’d rather not, Gran. I just want to try to forget about it. You won’t tell Mum or Dad, will you? I don’t want them to know. They will only stop me cycling to school if they find out.”

  “I am sure they wouldn’t do that but if you don’t want me to, I won’t, I promise. How do you feel now?”

  “Better, I suppose.”

  “Well, that’s good, I told you we’ll get to the bottom of this. Come over here and give your poor old Gran a big hug.”

  Kate got up from the sofa, walked around the coffee table and bent down to embrace her Gran, which felt good. “Thanks, Gran. I do feel a whole lot better now.”

  “Well, there is some good to come out of this, believe it or not. From what you just told me, I think you have a very special gift, my dear.”

  Kate stood up straight. “What do you mean, Gran?”

  “I want to try a couple of things with you for a moment.” Gran got up from her chair and took Kate by the hand. “Stand facing the wall over here.” She pointed to a spot on the carpet.

  Unsure of what to expect, Kate stood where she was told and faced the wall. The wall was white and bright from the reflection of the sunlight coming through the window.

  “Good. Now extend your left arm straight out in front of you with the palm of your hand facing the wall and your fingers spread slightly apart. Okay, that’s good, now do the same with your right arm in the same fashion and hold it two to three inches above the other hand.”

  Gran adjusted Kate’s right arm slightly and spread her fingers. “Perfect, all I want you to do is look at your left hand through the open fingers of your right hand, allowing your eyes to relax.”

  Kate stared at her fingers without blinking.

  Gran gave her a moment to concentrate. “Now tell me what you see.”

  The response was almost immediate. “I can see a soft, light-coloured glow from my hand, around my fingers.”

  “That is excellent, my dear.” Gran smiled and led Kate to the window.

  “You see that big tree over there, the one that’s standing higher than all the rest?”

  Kate nodded.

  “Okay, look at the top half without staring too hard, just relax, don’t look at the tree itself but at the image the tree represents, almost as if you are looking past it like you did with your fingers.”

  Kate was intrigued.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  Again, Kate stared at the tree without blinking, the leaves merged into a blur of green set against the blue sky.

  “I see a kind of haze shimmering right above the top.”

  “Okay, very good, and one final thing.”

  Gran went over to the television set in the corner of the room and turned it on. She asked Kate to sit close to the TV antenna and asked her to move her hand close to it. Kate waved her hand over the antenna, then away and back again. They both witnessed a signal and sound change on the screen each time her hand moved toward the aerial.

  “Do you understand what just happened?” Gran asked.

  Kate shook her head.

  “You can turn that off now, dear.” Gran sat back in her chair. She picked up her tea cup and took a sip.

  Kate gave one last wave of her hand, captivated by the interruption to the signal, and turned the television off. She looked back at Gran, forgetting about her own tea.

  Gran kept the cup resting on her lap. “The human body exudes energy and that energy can reach out farther than you would think and in ways that you might not expect. You didn’t have to touch the aerial to distort the picture and sound; the energy that surrounds your body caused the disruption to occur.

  “In effect, our bodies are broadcasting systems whereby the cells inside our bodies do the broadcasting. In fact, the estimation is that a hundred trillion electrically charged particles spew out electromagnetic radiation all around our bodies, called auras. For instance, when you rub an inflated balloon in your hair it sticks to the ceiling unaided and can stay there for days. Therefore, if all that energy comes from us and exists all around our body, can’t a similar occurrence happen when we think?

  “It is my belief, and many others besides, that all of our thoughts become energy as we think of someone or something and they form pictures in our heads. These pictures of energy always point at what it is we’re thinking about, just like electricity flowing through a line and into the TV. It flows out of our brain and heads toward the person. When it finds that person, which usually takes a split second, it lands right on them and passes the information over. So remember, whatever your thoughts are and whomever they point at will receive them whether they are consciously aware or not.

  “If you think about it, this is how animals communicate. Animals do not have words but they instinctively know when danger is present and they communicate the danger instantaneously to each other. Take the Serengeti in Africa, for example, great herds of animals roam the plains, sometimes in the hundreds. It only takes one of those animals to sense the danger and the whole herd, in a split second, runs simultaneously. That information had to have come from a member of the herd and they in turn passed the information on; otherwise, they would simply remain huddled in a bunch and end up as fodder food.

  “So just like animals, a thought from our mind charges particles that we can’t see but we can experience it through a feeling of knowing, understanding, or recognition. We usually call the results coincidence, like when I said I was just thinking about you before you called today. It happens when you run into a friend, you haven’t seen in a long time, but you were just thinking about, or when the small quiet voice tells us to call home, or when a thought or picture in our head tells us something is wrong, much as you experienced today.

  “You see, everything on this earth has its own energy, vibration or frequency, every colour, every sound and every living being, and the human mind is so vast and wonderful that we can pick up this energy and not even know it. We can tell if someone is in a bad mood or good mood just from his or her energy, can’t we? In addition, some of us, not many mind you, can even pick up someone’s intentions and, Kate, that’s what I believe you did today. You have a natural ability to absorb another person’s energy and know with some accuracy what their intentions are. It’s about as close as you can get to reading someone’s mind.”

  Kate had known something was wrong, unquestionably wrong. She felt it and saw pictures in her mind but she didn’t know how or why they came to be there. Gran provided a fascinating insight. The shock of earlier began to dissipate.

  “When that woman saw you,” Gran continued, “she thought about you and sent out energy currents that you intercepted as you went by. The energy drew your attention to her and she transmitted her thoughts to you without even realising it. The feeling down your back that you mentioned as you passed by was her energy infiltrating you and as a result you felt and thought what that person transmitted.”

  Kate shivered and Gran could see she felt uncomfortable to think that someone, someone she did not know, could invade her space just by thinking about her.

  “It’s not a bad thing; in fact, it’s a very good thing. It means that you have forewarning and forewarning means you can do something about problems and avoid the situation. She was clearly an opportunist judging by the way she propositioned the next girl she came across and therefore not a real threat to you, though, I realise it did not feel like that when it happened.

  “What I’m trying to say is that when you have a feeling of that nature in the future, stick to your guns and protect yourself by doing what feels right. To be forewa
rned is to be forearmed; you can prepare for it.”

  It was the first time Kate had ever heard the terms auras and electromagnetic radiation; she thought radiation had to do with bombs that could destroy everything. She was no longer afraid and a heightened self-awareness began to consume her.

  “There is one other avenue I would like to explore,” Gran said. “This is not a new phenomenon, historical references to a universal energy field date back as far as 5000 BC. Humans harnessed it every day to communicate until we learned how to talk, then write, and now we have televisions, phones, and many other ways to keep in touch with each other. Because we use these other forms of communication more, we have slowly re-programmed ourselves over time to ignore energy as a way of communication, even though it is faster than any other form we have. Let me ask you a question. Did any colours stand out when you looked at her?”

  Kate considered the question for a moment before answering. “She was standing in front of a white wall. It looked to have been freshly painted because the reflection of the sun made it extremely bright.”

  “But you could still clearly see her against the brightness of the wall?”

  “Yes, I think that’s why she stood out, against all the white.”

  “Besides all the white, was that the only colour that stood out?”

  “No, her red bike, there was a lot of red coming from it. It reflected up onto her tee-shirt. It almost made her tee-shirt look dirty somehow. It was a sort of muddy-coloured red, not the same shade as the bike, but I suppose that must have been to do with the sun. When she was down at the lights, I think I saw green, the green was dark, too, but it could have been from the trees behind her. The brightest colour was flickers of orange but again the sun was behind her so it could have been that, I don’t really know.”

  Gran finished the last of her tea and placed the cup and saucer back down on the coffee table. There was a look of excitement and a little peep of a smile as she sank back into her chair. “It is funny you should mention the sun, which brings me to my last point. Just like the sun, the human body emits a whole range of signals, as I said, and according to beliefs that date back to ancient times, the aura is the radiance from the energy field that surrounds us. It is usually strongest and most easily detected around the head.

  “This is where artistic depictions of halos around angels and saints come from. The most common colour of halos is gold, which represents spiritual enlightenment. Under ordinary circumstances, auras are only visible to certain people and do not look like a ring of colour on top of someone’s head. However, the colours are highly significant and you should pay close attention to them. The aura is a reflection of our true nature at any given moment. It is the real person behind the façade of superficial behaviour. You have heard the term, when someone ‘shows their true colours’?”

  Kate nodded. Thinking back to the woman on the bike, it was already apparent that the colours she had seen were real and not just a trick of the light as she’d first thought.

  “In general, the more colourful, cleaner, and brighter the aura, the better and more spiritually advanced the person is. It is not so much the colour itself appearing within the aura which reflects a positive or negative condition but the shade of colour. Soft, pastel shades generally indicate a positive condition, while dark, murky, and muddy shades as you saw, tend to indicate a more negative condition.

  “You mentioned three colours that you saw, two of them, the red and green were dark and the orange was bright. Red generally shows the status of physical life, or the personality. It also signifies the higher aspect of sexuality and love. In its negative state, the darker muddy red that you saw signifies either supressed or expressed anger. It also indicates an unbalance of love and sexuality. Dark or muddy green expresses jealousy, resentment, and feeling like a victim of the world, blaming people; there’s a lot of insecurity and low self-esteem, and a lack of understanding personal responsibility. A flash of orange in the aura indicates a thought or desire to exercise power and control. Quickly changing flashes as you described indicate quickly changing thoughts.

  “So from what you’ve told me and the colours you described I have no doubt that you have that ability to see and feel a person’s aura. When I was younger I could do it too, that is why I know so much about it. My grandfather once explained it to me the way I have done with you. He told me the ability has been in our family for centuries and that it always skips a generation before being passed on to the first born, so it skipped my mother then I received it. My two younger brothers and three sisters never witnessed it. He also told me that each time the ability or gift passes on it becomes stronger in that person, but diminishes at a faster pace as they get older, probably because we do not need them as much, but you never lose intuition. Who knows what abilities your first grandchild will possess?”

  21:

  “Knock, knock. Who’s there?”

  Kate stared into the cup with her head in her hands, the tan liquid still and peaceful. She rubbed her temples, trying to empty the useless questions and impeding thoughts that kept her mind churning at a relentless pace: Where is she? Why isn’t she back? Why didn’t I stop her? She needed to calm down, concentrate, and point her own thoughts toward her daughter.

  She began to consider scenarios that might have delayed Helen and ascertain if any of them resonated with her. She pictured Helen running, meeting a friend, stopping for a chat, going for a coffee, but nothing. She focused on a simple accident, a fall, walking with a limp, a twisted ankle, still nothing. She let her focus consider the possibility of a car crash, and then a mugging. Nothing happened. It was only when she contemplated abduction and worse, rape, when something pinged at her conscious and sent a cold shiver through her. Her energised thoughts mapped every street and path in a rush to locate her daughter. To let Helen know she was not alone, her Mum was with her if she needed her.

  To think in this manner frightened the life out of her. Every ounce of her prayed there was nothing to worry about. She couldn’t be sure anything bad had happened and hoped Helen would receive a subliminal message that her Mum was concerned and she should come home, or at least call. She was still only about a half hour late. Anything could have happened, not all bad.

  It didn’t help quell her uneasiness.

  Fran thought she was overreacting when she came into the bedroom to insist that they do something. He had been sleeping off the beer from the darts game the night before when Kate sat on the edge of the bed and shook him a level above gentle.

  “Fran, Fran, wake up, Helen’s missing.”

  “What, what, what’s up, what’s going on?” he asked in quick succession, moving his head from left to right, eyes barely open, trying to figure out where he was and what was so important. He’d been getting to the best bit of a titillating vivid dream. Kate was making no sense. “Shush, shush for a second,” he interjected washing his dry face in his hands and recalling the most important details of the dream in the hope he could slip back into it. The bed was comfortable; he made no effort to sit up. His head was groggy from the night before and he was miffed at having been woken. “What’s up, what’s all the fuss about?”

  Kate dismissed his tone of voice. He was never himself first thing in the morning. “It’s Helen. She’s still not back from her run. She should have been back by now. I’m worried about her. I have a feeling, a bad feeling.”

  It showed.

  “What time is it now?” He did his best to sound concerned but his mind still chased the dream.

  “A quarter to nine,” she said without looking at the bedside clock.

  “And what time did she go for the run?”

  “About half six; she should have been back forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Oh, Kate, is that all?” The sympathy in his voice manifested into shallow annoyance. He knew his wife had a tendency to overreact. “Sto
p worrying, the marathon is only two weeks away. She probably extended her run, she wants to do well. You know what she’s like. She’s a big girl, Kate. Stop overreacting.”

  Fran turned over and snuggled into the oversized pillow. “She’ll be back soon. Give her another half hour. If she’s not back by then wake me up.”

  “Something is wrong, I am telling you. Fran, get up now and help me look for her, I’m not joking. This is serious. Get up.” Kate pulled the quilt off him. “Come on.”

  “Okay, okay. Jesus.”

  Kate sat on the couch with the car keys squeezed in her hand waiting for Fran to get dressed. She looked at the small carriage clock on the mantelpiece for what felt like the hundredth time, almost five past nine and not a dickybird. A niggling paranoia to act overwhelmed her. She wished she had prevented Helen from leaving this morning. The dark conditions outside had played heavily on her mind, unlike other mornings. Watching her beautiful daughter disappear into the dank atmosphere had unsettled her.

  “There is a stink in that darkness beckoning my daughter to come out and play.”

  Sure, it would have sounded silly to Helen but had she persisted, told Helen to wait until the sun came up and more people moved about, Helen would have given in and stayed home, even if it was just to appease her silly, overprotective, loving mum.

  She stood up, unable to sit, and looked in the mirror above the fireplace. She took a deep breath and told herself for the umpteenth time that she needed to calm down and go out and find her daughter, with or without Fran.