Dead Cell

by Chris Johnson

  "Or," Ramsey retorted, "it could be the real thing."

  "Okay," Brianna answered. "You believe in what you do, and I still sit on the fence. How did you know you could read people by touch?"

  Ramsey smiled, looking towards Emily, feeling himself go into reverie. Lifting the wineglass to his mouth, he took a sip. "I was twelve years old, just beginning puberty. A school bully attacked me. He liked to pick on me because I enjoyed performing magic tricks with cards and coins. My favourite trick was making coins disappear one by one from someone's hands while they held them in their fist. There was one girl I enjoyed doing that for; her name was Susan, and I thought she was beautiful. One day, she asked me for a loan of some money for tuck shop. I thought my wet dreams had all come true at once, so I told her I didn't have it. And then, when she walked away, I called back to her, said there was something in her hair. She turned around to face me, I removed a dollar coin from her hair."

  "You little charmer," Brianna murmured, resting her chin on her hand as she listened. "What happened then?"

  "Nothing, at least, for two days. Then she came back with a couple of her other girl friends and asked me to do it again. That's when I showed her the other trick I told you with seven coins. I made them disappear, one after the other from her hand. She looked so rapt and I can still remember her eyes sparkling. By the time the last coin remained in her hand, she was squealing with excitement."

  "Are you sure we're talking about coins and magic tricks here?" Brianna laughed and then stopped when Ramsey shot a rebuking look at her.

  "Yes, of course. The next thing I knew was a pain in my head and then blackness. I woke up, but I wasn't in my body at the time."

  "Oh!" Brianna said with empathy. "You were king hit?"

  "It's a coward's punch," Ramsey responded. "I wasn't looking, and a king has more honour than a coward who attacks from behind. But, yes, that's what it was. I watched the teacher arrive to push the other students away as they crowded around to look at me on the ground. I even watched them check my pulse, give me CPR."

  "You stopped breathing?" Brianna asked in shock and then remembered something else. "And you watched this happen? How?"

  "I stopped living," Ramsey responded. "No breathing and no heartbeat. It apparently took two teachers half an hour of applying CPR in turns, until the ambulance arrived. They de-fibbed me, I'm not sure why as I am sure I should have been dead. The ambulance driver who revived me told my aunt he did not understand why he even tried. He just 'had a feeling'."

  Brianna started to put her hand out towards him and stopped, just a few inches away. "You were lucky he tried."

  Ramsey sniffed and smiled. "Yes. While I was watching everything, I saw other people there too. Other children. Some of them had clothes from back in our parents and grandparents days."

  "Who were they?"

  "The same people you pass in the streets and never see," Ramsey responded. "Spirits. Just like the one who killed Debra and who has been killing those other people in the car crashes."

  He paused a moment, letting that part of the story sink in. Brianna's hand retracted a little.

  "That bothers you?" Ramsey asked.

  "I don't know what to believe," Brianna answered. "You never told me how you watched this happen if you stopped living."

  "It was an out-of-body experience. My astral body, or my soul, left my physical body. You could say I was a ghost, but there's more," Ramsey answered. "After I woke up, I later found that I could touch things and know about people. That's when I became fascinated with the paranormal and found the ability is called 'psychometry'."

  Brianna was silent for some time, thinking, and then asked, "What about how you read people's minds?"

  He smiled. "I am not completely telepathic," he answered. "If I can read someone's thoughts, it's through body language, which you may have guessed, and creative use of psychometry. When I touch people, I sometimes know what they are thinking. But not always."

  Ramsey picked up the plastic bag again, waving it a little. "Now, before it gets too late, let's see this handkerchief."

  Opening it up, he took the cloth from it and held it in his hands. Flashes started coming to his mind, faint at first but then growing in intensity, until Ramsey found himself in another vision.

  MAJOR OATES ALREADY knew what it was about, and he wasn't happy about it either. When he received the call from his old army buddy, Superintendent Myles, and heard one of his detectives was coming in, he knew that one of his boys was acting up. He pretended not to know anything about it when Myles spoke to him. If it had been about anything else, he would have made Detective Cogan wait longer for this meeting. But he agreed to have it so soon because he wanted to know what the police knew, so he could determine what action to take. If they knew about Project Gemini, he would have to take things even deeper.

  His first surprise was when Detective Cogan arrived. Wow! What a babe, but a smart one. He would have to play it cool with her. His next surprise was how fluent she was in Army-speak. She served in Afghanistan and East Timor. He didn't recognise her from his time in Afghanistan, but he blocked a lot of that out, and her name seemed familiar.

  After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, Detective Cogan cut straight to the chase.

  "I am here more as a formality," she told him in a tone that he knew she intended to disarm him. "There have been shooting deaths in Statton, which appear to be from an alleged sniper."

  Oates' eyes opened wide in surprise. "Oh? What kind of help do you need?" He kept the best poker face he could as he waited for her answer.

  Cogan glanced towards the window, she could hear sounds of voices outside, and then back at the Major. "The bullet is from an SR-98," she told him. "Whoever did it has had military training and I know that you used to be one of the best trainers in the Army."

  He felt flattered by that, even though he felt she was making a ploy. "Thank you," he answered. "I like to think I still am. Did I train you?"

  She shook her head. "No. You trained Tom Richter."

  Oates recognised the name. "Tom! Yes, I remember him. It's such a shame what happened to him in Afghanistan. A good man. Did you serve with him?"

  He tried deflecting her with the response.

  Cogan started to reply, but her nose seemed to tickle and she tried to hold back a sneeze. It didn't work and she let off an explosive sound, sniffing again, and holding a hand over her face. Her other hand searched in her jacket and she released a disappointed sound. "Do you happen to have a tissue?"

  He didn't have a tissue, so he retrieved the next best thing: his handkerchief. Detective Cogan took it from him, thanking him, and wiped her nose, made a blowing noise in it and rolled it up. She started to hand it back but Major Oates held his hands up, palms towards her.

  "No, thanks," he told her, not wanting to take the soiled cloth back. "You can keep it."

  "Thank you," Cogan replied, placing the handkerchief in her jacket's inside pocket. "I understand you still have the training program on at the base." She worded it as a statement, but let it sound like a question.

  Major Oates hesitated, realising how close he came to falling for the bait, and calculated his response. "I don't train snipers any more myself but, yes, we still have the program going here. What do you need?"

  "Have any of your trainees or graduates from the base been missing or on leave this week?"

  A nice direct answer and, Major Oates figured, a direct hit, but he wasn't going to let her know that. "I will have to check on that for you, Detective Cogan. If I can have your card, I will check and let you know. But how do you know they came from this base?"

  Cogan shrugged. "I don't know at this point but I can't leave a stone unturned, as you know."

  Major Oates nodded. "Of course."

  CRAIG RAMSEY DROPPED the handkerchief back into the plastic bag, pressing its seal shut. He looked at Brianna, reading the expression on his face, and a smile flickered on his face. "Well?"

&nbs
p; Brianna tried to keep her poker face, but she found it difficult to hide the amazement that she was otherwise unprepared to accept. She remained silent, not wanting to admit she couldn't explain how Ramsey knew so much about the meeting; neither did she want to admit that she might have been wrong about him.

  "So the answer is that Major Oates told you nothing," Ramsey said, not needing to read her mind or to use psychometry to know. "What I'm curious about is, was that sneeze real or faked for the sake of taking his handkerchief?"

  Brianna laughed. "That's for me to know and you to work out, if you dare."

  "I'm only seeing this because it's the Major's point-of-view I am receiving. There is more though," Ramsey said, with a twinkling glint of his eye. "Do you want the names that Major Oates isn't going to tell you?"

  Brianna answered, "You can tell me the names, but we won't know until we look them up on the computer." She removed a notepad, from the backpack, and a pen.

  "Project Gemini was prominent in the Major's mind," Ramsey responded, his expression showing he recognised the name elsewhere, as he picked the bowls up and took them to the sink to rinse them. "And he knew the name of Joseph Denton. Does that mean anything to you?"

  Brianna shook her head. "I don't know of Project Gemini at all, but Joseph's name is familiar from my time in Afghanistan." Her tone shifted again, almost excitedly, as she started to see more value in Ramsey's prognostications. "What about Joseph?"

  "Joseph has been on leave," Ramsey answered, coming back to the bench. "By the way, do you want dessert?"

  "Maybe later," she answered, shaking her head. "What about Joseph?"

  "I gained the impression from the handkerchief that Joseph is on the Major's mind. He went on leave just about a month ago, the nineteenth of May, I think, after a relative's traffic accident here in Statton. A young boy died, and Joseph took time from the Army for bereavement. He hasn't returned and -"

  "And Joseph is a top marksman!" Brianna added. "That's how I know his name."

  Craig replied, "Well?"

  "I might be starting to believe in your voodoo stuff," Brianna replied, with a conceding smile, "but not completely. Something else that matches is the accidents in general all started in late May. It could be coincidence but it could be worth checking out."

  "It's a good thing that you managed to score that handkerchief," Ramsey told her. "Thanks for bringing it around as it's given us one good lead, maybe two of them. I like the ploy you used to get it."

  Brianna smiled. "You're trying to bait me to find out about my sneeze?"

  Ramsey couldn't hold back his grin, knowing Brianna was onto his trick. "What do you think?"

  Brianna held her hand out of him, palm facing him, and her eyes locked on his. "Do me," she said.

  Ramsey laughed at her words. "I assume you want me to read you... right?"

  She smiled, realising her words and blushed, before replying. "You tell me."

  Chapter 15

  It was Saturday, 25th June 2016. The rosy coloured sun rising in a lazy attitude above the mountain range did little to combat the hard chilling wind keeping many from leaving their bed; everyone, that is, except for Joseph Denton. Nightmares had plagued him through the night, preventing him from enjoying a good sleep, so he decided to take a drive to Ashton, one of Statton's inner suburbs. His eyes felt tired, red and stinging, but he ignored it; neither his body's pains or the wind's bone-chilling registered with him. Only the residual images and sounds from his nightmares came to him.

  He drove the dirty light-blue van off the road and along a dirt track, disappearing into the tunnel of darkness formed by the thick foliage of surrounding trees. His only companions were the sound of his tyres crunching on gravel and the quiet van's purring engine. At last, he arrived at a chain-link mesh gate blocking the path. Leaving the headlights on, Joseph turned the engine off and stepped out of the van. He reached towards the passenger seat, grabbing a canvas bag and slung it over his shoulder before shutting the van's door. His confident feet negotiated him off the path down a slight decline that followed the fence line until he felt the foliage hid him enough from the path.

  At last, he reached a point that he felt it was safe to stop; he could make out the van's headlights about twenty metres away. Joseph dropped the bag to the ground, opened it, and retrieved a set of wire cutters. He cut a section of the fence's links, creating an opening big enough for him, and walked through it and towards the concrete structure. Finding a thick bush near the reservoir's base, he hid his closed canvas bag under it and checked it was out of sight.

  A strange sensation slithered through his mind, like the other times, and he paused. Joseph felt dizzy, off-centre, and a strange voice or thought passed through his mind. They never listen. Why don't they take notice? Although he didn't know what the voice was, it seemed familiar as though it were a part of him. He knew then that another accident had occurred, even seemed to know that it was the other side of Statton. Some other brainless bastard had bought the farm and died on the roads. Joseph knew because these episodes started a week before he went to find the sniper's rifle; every time he heard the voice or felt its thoughts slice through his mind, someone died. He even knew why they died. Why didn't the authorities know, or even do something about it? It was all up to him. He had to help the other guy control these vermin.

  Sometimes he felt as though the voice spoke to him. It seemed as if it knew him and what happened; it understood him. It even seemed to love him, as though it were family, but it also sent him on missions.

  It wasn't always like that, however. Years ago in Afghanistan, he was one of the top snipers at the time. Nicknamed "Blow-Jo", he hit first time, every time. Some of his Army mates said he could shoot the testicles from a flea from a kilometre away, without harming the dog. That was before the incident that made everything go arse-up.

  His mission was to provide support for one of the engineer teams, while they were rebuilding bridges for the supply trucks. He watched through his sights for the enemy as they crept like snakes through the desert dunes. The enemy never knew where he was, but they knew about him, and they were crafty. To them, he was "The Jackal", and they wanted his head; it didn't matter if the body came with it. So, he became his namesake, picking his targets off. Then came the came the day when they ambushed him instead. They were waiting, they had to be to catch him off-guard. The rocky alcove where he hid exploded around him. Three minutes of cutting chaos felt like three hours as bullets ricocheted around him, and a bazooka shell shattered the rock above him. The shock deafened him, leaving a horrible empty lack of sound before transforming a minute later to a hideous single note that played forever. Then he heard the staccato of the machine guns stuttering, bullets pinging about him like metal gnats, and he felt the shrapnel's shocking bite on the side of his chest. Somehow, he managed to escape, dodging behind more rocks before gunfire from different directions pinned him to the spot. When the rocket fire and explosions closed in upon him, Joseph thought he was going to die, that a bullet with his name would soon claim him. The enemy voices faded as they retreated; he heard an engine, the beating of a helicopter's rotors as they churned the sand around him into a sharp rising cloud. He still didn't know how the enemy knew he was there, but he was glad his own people were able to rescue him. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the dreams, the voices, the recurring nightmares and flashbacks.

  His feet felt both light and heavy, alternating between the two, and his head swam for a moment. Putting his hand on a nearby tree, he steadied himself. The voice in his head, The Other One, was getting ready to attack. He needed to get his act together for the big one.

  BRIANNA COGAN WOKE with a start. Something felt different, unfamiliar, and her heart pounded. This wasn't her bed.

  Her eyes focused, seeing posters on one of the walls. She recognised one of them as Rhianna, another looked like an old Tupac poster, and a few others she didn't know. Where was she?

  Images flashed back to her; she thought they w
ere from a dream. Craig Ramsey kissing her; she flirted with him; his hands felt warm on her hands; looking through a sniper's scope; sandy terrain.

  A warm delicious scent wafted through the air, teasing her nostrils; bacon, eggs and coffee. The smells cleared her head and her stomach murmured. She was still wearing her clothes except her jacket which draped over a chair near a desk in the corner. She moved the thick doona cover back and started shivering in shock. Damn! What was the temperature this morning?

  Craig Ramsey's voice came to her; he was speaking to someone in conversation. Brianna listened and heard no one else. He must have been on the phone to someone. She heard Tyson's name mentioned.

  Although she still wore her socks, her feet felt like they were freezing in the winter air. Brianna found her shoes by the bed, slipping them on before grabbing her jacket and opening the bedroom door. Still wriggling a little inside her jacket to warm up more, she followed the smells towards the kitchen.

  Craig stopped talking as Brianna entered the kitchen. Turning to face her, he said, "Good morning! Did you sleep well?"

  "Who were you talking to?" she asked.

  Craig looked to the side, as though at someone else, then back at her with a guilty look. He answered in an almost perfect impersonation of Don Adams' character, Maxwell Smart. "Would you believe that I can talk to the dead?"

  Brianna hesitated, not knowing what to think. Yes, she believed that Craig could read things about people by holding personal objects, and she knew that he claimed to be able to see spirits. But speaking with them? She noted a twinkle in his eye. "Do they talk back?"

  Craig smiled, handing her a cup of hot coffee. "Strong black, with one sugar, right?"

  She took the coffee in her hand, its heat almost burning her fingers through the hot mug. Grimacing as she gingerly moved around to the mug's handle, she said, "How did you know how I take my coffee?"