HEAR (6 page)

Yoga breaths. Yoga breaths
. . .

I breathe in and out deeply in an attempt to shake this image free. It must be wrong. It's stupid. I must have associated “4N” with the word “foreign.”

But this feels like something else. This set of impressions
isn't
like the last; these images flashed at me vividly, fully formed.They streaked through my skull in bright detail. I'm probably just thinking about my parents' trip to China; I'm nervous about their travel. They already feel very far away to me. Or maybe it's that all of this stuff feels so “4N” to me, and the image reflects the truth of how much I want to go home.

My breathing steadies. I stare at the notebook.
Think, Kass!
No, that's not right . . .
Free-associate, Kass!

But nothing else comes.

Brian waits another minute, then says, “Spotted tiger.”

I see Henry, the stuffed bear I carried with me everywhere until I was seven years old. I loved Henry so fiercely that patches of his fur wore off, effectively making him look spotted. It's obvious why he came to mind, but Henry was no tiger. He was a teddy bear. I write
NA
under the prompt.

After another few minutes, Brian collects our notebooks and sits on the edge of his desk. “So,” he says, “ Your impressions?”

“I mostly saw colors,” Mara replies. “Very few images, more like . . . washes of pigment. Very Jungian.”

I blink at her, wondering if she realizes how pretentious and full of it she sounds. Or maybe it's just that I suddenly feel ignorant. Or both.

“What do you mean by that?” Alex asks.

Mara tilts her head, as if disappointed that Alex doesn't get the reference. “ You know, Carl Jung, the psychiatrist-philosopher? He focused on the unconscious, dreams and symbols. He believed our senses could turn inward, and when that ‘introverted sensation' happens, you don't necessarily see an image, but you get reflections and shimmers of events that are still unborn.”

“I saw a few pictures,” Dan says. I am grateful that he doesn't pause to reflect on Mara's psychobabble about the unconscious. “One really distinct one was a cargo plane.”

“The one taking off from some rain forest or something?” Alex asks.

Dan looks surprised and nods. “ Yeah. But I couldn't figure out exactly where—”

“Colombia,” Alex interrupts. “From some of the other details I got, like the flag and the shoes people were wearing, it must be Colombia.”

Dan stares back at him. “That's really specific. I only saw the plane and the trees surrounding the runway.”

Alex shrugs and smiles. No big deal, apparently.

“What else came through clearly?” Brian asks.

“Well, the tail obviously,” Alex says.

“The tail?” Mara repeats. “Like the tiger's tail?”

“No,” he replies. “The first prompt.”

Dan blinks. “Do you mean t-a-i-l like what's at the butt end of an animal or t-a-l-e like a bedtime story?”

“I mean tail like the person—or people—following us,” Alex answers quietly.

I realize I've begun twisting my pinkie ring as I stare at Alex, wondering exactly how pronounced or problematic his “people are always watching” paranoia really is.

“ You think people are actively spying on us?” Pankaj asks, a smile playing on his lips. “I mean,
aside
from the NSA?”

Alex nods, his own smile gone, his eyes serious. “ Yeah, I do.”

“Mm, well, this is all very interesting,” Brian interjects coolly, his tone at odds with his sudden fidgeting. He takes a three by five card out of his breast pocket and scribbles something down before blowing on the ink then returning the card. “Thank you, Alex. Okay, anyone else?”

Pankaj raises his hand, but it sags. He runs his fingers through his hair. “I got something that came through really clearly,
but . . .” He winces. “But it's kind of lame.”

Mara smiles. “Now you have to say it.”

“It was for the one you mentioned, the spotted tiger?” Pankaj has lowered his voice, like he's disappointed in himself—which is odd, seeing as he's only projected dangerous confidence till now. “I saw this old teddy bear. Its fur was worn away in circular patches. So it kind of looked spotted.”

I nearly fall off my stool. I hold my breath.

“But it definitely wasn't a tiger. It was a teddy bear. Ratty and weird looking. Not the kind of teddy bear any kid would want—”

“Maybe that's what being well loved looks like,” I hear myself blurt in Henry's defense.

Now everyone is staring at me. It takes a beat or two for me to calm down. Once again, Brian is furiously writing on his index card. When he looks up, our eyes meet, and he smiles.

“Well, this was a very productive first session,” he says. “We'll be repeating this exercise. When it comes to remote viewing, repetition and training should have a great impact. The more often you allow your mind to go to a place of receptivity, the more you're likely to see. And regardless of how familiar or common the image, don't dismiss it. Don't dismiss
anything
. We'll filter things later. Your job is to be the medium for the message.” He looks at his watch. “Okay, why don't we break and meet back here in an hour? I want you to relax for a little bit before we begin again.”

“Bathroom?” I ask.

“Down the hall to the right.”

I nod and head for the door.

Outside, I break into a run. I push hard on the bathroom door then lock myself in the far stall.

Rules are generally made for a reason; I get that. And generally
I try to follow them. But I've always been unafraid to break the bad or inconvenient rules, and so I yank my cell out of my bag and call my dad. I need to share the questions festering in my mind—share them out loud, possibly in the form of a rant. How did Dan and Alex see the same plane? Did my airport security thing have anything to do with it too? What was Alex talking about when he said someone was following us? And craziest of all, how did Pankaj see and describe Henry, my teddy bear?

After a few interminable rings, a click. “ You've reached the voice mail of William Black. I'm out of the country at the moment, but kindly leave a message, and I'll return your call as soon as I'm able.”

“William Black, this is your daughter, Kassandra Black. We need to have a little chat about your uncle and this place you sent me, so call me back as soon as humanly possible. Thank you and goodbye.”

When I put the phone away, I wonder what he and my mother are doing in China. I think of Brian's description of time as spherical, and since it's already tomorrow in China, I'm hoping my parents have some idea of what happened today. At this point I'll take any insight I can get . . .

I head back to the lab. It's empty.

They've all left me behind, my uncle included.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“One with everything, please,” I tell the counter lady at Einstein's Bagels.

I can't help but wonder what Einstein would say about being the pitchman for a college town bagel joint. Probably,
The food's not bad, relatively speaking.
Wait . . . did I just make a physics pun? Somebody shoot me.

“ You're going to smell,” I hear Dan say over my shoulder.

“I'm okay with that.” I decide not to turn to acknowledge him or his rudeness, and I smile at the counter lady instead. “And give me some of that scallion cream cheese too, please.”

“I am not sitting next to you when we get back,” he says.

“ Your loss.” I pull cash out of my purse. “How much?”

But the cashier is not paying attention. She's focused on the small TV hanging from the ceiling.

I wave a five-dollar bill in front of her.

She quickly eyeballs my order. “Four dollars even,” she says. “Hey, Jim, can you turn up the volume?” She takes the bill without looking at me and hands a dollar back, eyes still glued to the screen. When the volume rises, I hear a reporter saying, “We don't yet know how many dead, but we're expecting more casualties to come.”

My eyes dart to the TV. A police officer is standing in front of a bank of microphones. “What happened?” I ask.

“Some asshole went on a rampage just up the road in the Bridgestone Mall,” the cashier mutters.

“Oh my God.” I whirl around to Dan, who's still scanning the bagel selection. “Did you hear that?” I point to the TV, wondering if his mind is flashing to the same thing as mine: Alex's response to the “MD” prompt . . .

The officer seems to forget he's on camera. He looks directly at someone in the crowd of reporters.
“At this point we have only one confirmed fatality. The victim was pronounced dead at Henley Medical Center. Identification is pending. But the gunman is still on the loose, and we have every reason to believe he is still armed and extremely dangerous.”

I stare at Dan.

“Plain bagel with plain cream cheese,” he says.

Once we're out the
door, I grab Dan's shoulder and spin him around. “ You're not at all surprised or upset by the news?” I ask.

He shakes me off. “No. I mean, what are you going to do?”

I have no answer for that. I stand there, stunned, as he sits down at one of the picnic tables outside the restaurant. With stoic precision, he removes his plain bagel from the wax paper. I slide into the bench on the other side. “ You aren't the tiniest bit
freaked out
that the shooting happened so close to here and the gunman escaped?”

“Not really, I guess.” He shrugs.

I stare at him for a moment. “Why not?”

“People die all the time. I don't have the same reactions to things that most people do.” Dan picks up his bagel and starts chewing.

This
is not news to me.

“I was diagnosed autistic as a kid.”

Ah.
So I was on the right track in my assumptions, but I'm not sure how to respond. I swallow and look down at my own bagel. “Oh.”

“I'm not anymore. If you're on the spectrum, you'll probably never be completely ‘normal'—whatever that means—but you can get better. It requires intense therapy when you're young. Mom quit her job and worked with me every day to give me the best chance.”

Again, I'm at a loss. “That was really amazing of her,” I offer.

“ Yeah. She felt guilty.”

I'm midbite when Dan says this, so I have to gnaw through the rest of the chewy dough before I can speak. “Why would she feel guilty? Because she felt responsible for ‘making you autistic'?” I say this sarcastically, knowing how silly it would be for someone to feel this way.

But he nods. “Also because my dad was a complete dick.” Dan takes a big bite out of his bagel. “He's dead now.”

His tone is so matter-of-fact. “Oh my God, Dan, I'm so sorry to hear that.” I reach my hand out to put it on his before realizing that might weird him out, so I quickly pull back. “How did it happen?”

“Train derailment. Two years ago.” His tone remains flat. “He abused my mom and used to beat me, so I'm not really torn up about it.” He pulls his bagel apart and drags his index finger through the cream cheese. “She stayed with him because she didn't have the money to do therapy with me if she left.” He licks the white glop off his finger. “I knew the train was going to derail,” he finishes. His face, with its chiseled features, is absolutely expressionless.

I must be misunderstanding him in some way. I think he just told me he knew his father would die in a train crash. “Wait, what?”

“My mom and I drove him to the station, which is about an hour away from our house. Anyway, after we drop him off and start driving back home, I wait until we're about forty-five minutes from the train station until I tell my mom.”

I stare at Dan. “Until you tell her . . . ?”

“That the train is going to crash.”

“How did you know that?” This cannot be true. Yet I don't think he's lying. Whatever I believe,
he
believes what he's telling me. I'm starting to feel a little nauseated.

“I kept having dreams about it.”

I'm about to speak, but he holds up a finger. “ You're going to say, ‘Isn't it possible that because he was abusive you had a general wish for him to die?'”

I nod; that is exactly what the picnic-table psychologist in me was going to say.

“The answer is yes,” he confirms. “But the dreams started giving way to a daytime vision. And in that I saw the specifics.”

“So . . . you told this to your mom? What did she do?”

“First, she got very mad. She even said, ‘Dan, I think this is a revenge fantasy.' But part of her also suspected I was telling the truth. So she pulled off the road and stopped the car. I can still see that whole thing so clearly.” He pauses for a moment, staring at his half-eaten bagel. “She took out her cell phone and called Amtrak. It took her forever to get a real person on the line, and by the time someone finally did speak to her, my mom sounded like a lunatic. She starts telling the reservationist that she needs to stop the train, says she has information that the train is going to crash.”

“No!”

“That's what I was thinking: How dumb, right? I said, ‘Great, now they're going to think you're a terrorist, Mom.' The reservations lady said she needed to get her supervisor on the line; she also connected the call to the police. Mom just keeps repeating, ‘Don't let the train leave. Keep it at the platform.' But when the supervisor got on the phone, he said, ‘Ma'am, I need to inform you that the train has already departed.'”

I shake my head.

Dan nods. “Mom screamed. Then she hung up,” he says matter-of-factly. “She looked at me and said, ‘You waited.' Said it just like that, scared but calm, and I said, ‘Yeah, I did.'” He finishes the rest of his bagel, wipes his mouth off with the edges of the paper bag, then crumples it into a ball. “ You have some cream cheese on your cheek.”

My head spins. I can't believe what I'm hearing, and yet it's become increasingly difficult to deny. “Dan,” I say, wiping my hand across my face, “the shooting in the mall?”

“ Yeah, I bet that's what Alex was talking about. He saw it before it went down.”

When Dan and I
get back to the lab, the others have already returned.

“Where's the professor?” Dan asks.

Pankaj points to the dry-erase board bearing a note from Uncle Brian:
Back ASAP.

“Do you think it had to do with the shooting?” I ask. But from the looks in their eyes, it's clear they haven't yet heard the news.

“Mall shooting,” Dan says. “It's all over TV.”

“Oh no,” Alex says softly, flopping onto one of the stools and closing his eyes. “Was a Henley professor killed?”

I flinch, glancing at Dan. Nobody mentioned that on the news.

Dan shakes his head. “They confirmed one fatality, but didn't identify—”

“It was a Henley professor. He was the fatality,” Alex says. “When I saw the aftermath of the shooting earlier this morning, I didn't want to say it. Too scary, too . . .”

We wait for him to say more—but he just stands and shakes his head, then gathers his bag. He starts walking out.

Mara's face has turned ashen. “Do you want any company?” she calls after him.

“No, I'm gonna . . . I just have to, uh . . .” He trails off and shuts the door behind him.

“Told ya,” Dan says, looking me directly in the eye.