First Sight installment 22
022
I can still remember you
Like a wish that won't come true
All the rumors do add up
Do they always?
Still water does run deep
Your currents pull me through my sleep
It goes away but then comes back
Will it always?
- The Samples,
Still Water
Sarah ran beside a narrow street lined by neatly maintained old houses. Bare-limbed trees formed a broken ceiling above her. Tears welled in the girl's eyes, eyes that had seen everyone she had ever cared about destroyed. She remembered her father and brother. Their loss was a hollow ache deep in her chest. She didn't understand how, but she knew she was to blame.
Sarah remembered the night it happened. She remembered the horror of waking in the center of a smoldering pit where her house once stood. She remembered the remnants of a terrifying nightmare in which she had been relentlessly pursued ... by what? She could not remember.
That morning, a rare clear and sunny winter's day in upstate New York, remained vivid in her mind. Her mother frantically packed what few belongings she could salvage from their ruined home. Her back turned to Sarah as she rummaged through the debris. Sunlight glinted strangely through her mother's chestnut colored hair, distorted by the tears filling her eyes.
"Where are we going, Mommy?" Sarah's voice quavered.
"We're going to see your auntie in Chicago." Her mother's voice broke and she let the bag slip from her hands. For a moment she remained silent.. Then her shoulders straightened. She turned to her daughter, a grim resolve on her pale face. When she spoke again her voice was strong and reassuring. "She'll help us. We can stay there as long as we need. It's going to be okay, baby girl."
"Okay."
The trip seemed neverending, and the train became her world. Her mother would only let her sleep for a few minutes at a time. Sarah could not understand why, and she became irritable and short-tempered. All her mother would tell her was that it wasn't good to sleep on a train.
The train finally arrived at Chicago Union Station after midnight. After making their way through the disembarking crowd, they paused on a bench to rest for a moment. Sarah's mother neared collapse from exhaustion. The last memory Sarah had was her mother's sleeping face. Then she had snuggled up beside her and fallen asleep herself. She dreamed about seeing the city from high up in the sky, all the pretty lights...then falling. When she awoke she was alone, and not where she had fallen asleep. She sprawled at the base of a bridge, beside a small stream. Sounds of traffic had awakened her, the raucous call of morning rush hour.
She wandered until this morning. For a brief moment she thought she might no longer be alone... but like her previous life, the moment crumbled before her.
Sarah's pace slowed as exhaustion filled her limbs with sand. Shivering against the chill wind, she looked around her. Her attention focused on a house ahead of her. A dozen shingles from the roof lay scattered near its front door. Boards partially covered all the windows The house might once have been white. What little paint remained was splotched with dark mildew. All seemed quiet around it. Maybe she could rest in there awhile, out of the wind.
****
"Ansgar, you sure seem to have a nose for trouble." Jake Brewer sat on the fender of a scorched Civic, arms across his thick torso. "But I don't know why you're sniffing around here. What part of 'suspended' don't you understand?"
"
This guy sure is a charmer, " Mary said. "
He smells bad too. "
"Nice to see you, too, Jake." Gabe repressed a smile at Mary's comments. "What are you doing out here in the 'burbs?"
"Locals called in the big boys. Call it municipal cooperation. You know, all that Homeland Defense jazz. The feds are going to be all over this one soon, though." Brewer snorted with contempt. Jake waved a meaty hand with fingers like short, fat sausages in the direction of the disembodied leg. "Looks like we've got a suicide bomber here."
Gabe looked around the scene.
Suicide? Yeah, but the bomb is a little girl, and this is what happens to anyone crazy enough to get near her.
"
That little girl is alone and scared. "
I know.
"Well," Jake's rough voice shattered Gabe's reverie. "What'cha got? I figured you'da cracked this one open by now. Jack Casey says you're the best ... oh yeah, Casey's not around anymore, is he? Still haven't heard an explanation for what happened that night that passes the old smell test."
Gabe said nothing, but his face hardened and his glare bore a hole in the beefy detective.
"
Calm down, Gabe," cautioned Mary.
"I've never felt so much rage inside you. Anger is dangerous in those with the talent. "
Wonderful, thought Gabe,
now you sound like Yoda. Look out for the Dark Side. But in his mind's eye he was reliving the devastation he had seen this morning, and sensed that Mary was right. Of course, the kind of raw power the little girl had displayed was beyond the kin of Gabe's rather limited bag of tricks.
"So, did you see anything?" Gabe realized that Brewer was returning his fiery stare.
"Nope," Gabe responded, casting his eyes down at his feet. "I was a block away when the bomb went off. By the time I got here it looked pretty much like you see now, minus thick-skulled detectives walking all over a scene."
"You're getting into a habit of being in the middle of some
ing bizarre cases, Ansgar, and not seeing a damned thing." Brewer examined Gabe through narrowed eyes. "Someday soon you and I are going to have a long talk about what happened back at the Abrams scene. I think you're hiding something."
"Guys like you shouldn't think, Brewer. It's dangerous. Leave that to the pros." Gabe turned on his heel and strode away. The only thing that kept him from flying into a rage was the fact that, as blunt as he might be, Brewer was a good cop at heart. Brewer had also been a friend of Jack Casey's. And deep down, Gabe did feel responsible for Jack's death.
"
There really isn't anything you could have done, Gabe, " Mary consoled. "
It was beyond your control from the moment Abrams cast that spell. "
"Rationally I know that, but it doesn't make it any easier." Gabe stopped and looked around the shopping center parking lot. "I'll muddle through. We've still got to find that kid before she blows something else up."
****
Several forms huddled close to an old steel barrel, basking in scant heat radiating from a wad of burning trash.
"Strange things happening around here lately." The speaker leaned closer to the fire, endangering his unkempt salt-and-pepper beard. He straightened to his full six-foot height as if realizing his eminent peril.
"What kind of things?" A younger man, wild blond hair sticking out from beneath the hood of a battered coat, huddled closer.
The bearded man met the younger man's brilliant blue eyes for a moment then gazed back into the fire.
"People disappearing, more than norm...." A violent coughing fit seized him.
"You all right, man?"
"I'll live," the older man answered after a few minutes. "Nobody cares about us down here, though."
"Somebody might, old man, somebody might." the young man backed away from the fire. "Be careful. I'll see you tomorrow."
A grunt was the only response. Asher Russell walked briskly out of the alley. He roamed the south side of the city, through some of the old warehouse districts. He'd heard from people working at several shelters that the numbers of homeless people disappearing had jumped dramatically. The police never paid much attention to these areas and since no bodies turned up, they weren't spending any extra resources on it.
Asher smelled a story. Situations like these always appealed to the humanity of the readers, and more importantly to his editor. Anyway, it sold copy. Asher shook his head at the irony of the lot. The very lack of humanity that these stories often exposed was really what drove the newspapers to investigate.
So much for the altruism of man, Asher thought. He glanced at the sign marking the Kedzie station on the Orange Line. After climbing to the platform he jumped around in impatience and to generate some additional body heat against the cold.
A young woman sat huddled on one of the benches, waiting for the train. She didn't look around or move beyond the rhythmic expansion of her breathing. Asher stopped bouncing around for a moment to look more closely at her.
She might be cute, he thought as he nonchalantly wandered nearer to her. He looked closer. Some recognition tickled the back of his mind. Something was very familiar about the wavy brown hair that escaped the confines of the knit stocking cap she wore. Asher stopped a few paces away.
"Damned cold out tonight isn't it?" he asked of no one in particular.
His speech echoed around the deserted train platform.
Unfriendly sort, Asher thought. His curiosity still controlled his brain. He really wanted a good look at the woman's face. Asher walked the length of the platform, casually glancing as he passed the woman to get a better look. She continued to sit still, staring at the gray cement floor. Her hair helped to obscure her face from Asher's inquisitive stare. The feeling of familiarity still crawled around inside his skull.
****
The pond's surface rippled in the breeze that swept through the cemetery, yet remained clear of any reflections save the lanterns which hung around its edge. A deep sigh escaped the Sister. She sat, as she had for hours, wrapped in layers of woven wool and a heavy felted cloak. Two long braids of gray and brown hair emerged from beneath the cloak's hood, reaching the ground where she sat. The hour of midnight had come and passed bringing with it no news of the lost child. Worry lines etched the Sister's normally serene face, sadness weighted her eyes.
The pond's surface remained void. An unknown power blocked the pond's energy, of this she was now certain. Was it a manifestation of Sarah's uncontrolled abilities, or was an intermeddler interfering with their search?
"Sister!"
The distressed cry shattered her contemplation. She turned toward the old church building. A stooped, elderly woman stood framed in the central of the three doors opening from the church onto the graveyard.
"What is wrong, Leila?" She rose fluidly from the ground.
"That rascal Asher has returned again, Sister," the old woman spoke with the hint of a Scottish accent, "and he's brought another wayward child with him."
The Sister moved swiftly in the church, cloak swirling in her wake. Leila stepped inside and pointed down the corridor to her right. There a door stood half-ajar, voices drifting out into the hallway.
"...I don't know how long she'd been there," Asher replied to someone in the room, "and I thought she'd had a kid about the time I left."
"She did." The Sister stepped across the threshold. "Where did you find her?"
© 2003, Austin Hale
