Psychic Read online

  Huge motorcade.

  Major city.

  Southern part of the country — Texas — Dallas, specifically.

  People lining streets.

  Famous man.

  A man, though admired by many, hated — no, perhaps feared was better — by others, including…

  Lizzie stared off into space.

  The motorcade wound through the town, as this man — she found it hard to focus on just who this man was — sat in the back of a long car… or not really long, but felt long… a convertible? He sat in the back of this convertible, on the right, his wife to his left. Two others sat in the front. Famous Man was happy, though a part of him, an unconscious part, actually knew… considered… what was about to happen…

  Images of a young Indian — east Indian — a beggar boy—

  Images of another… very close to Mr. Famous Man… traveling through Dallas…

  A brother.

  Killed earlier in life.

  Blackness… something about a very dark, very evil…

  Blackness.

  Black. Black, black, black…

  Lizzie shivered.

  The convertible and its procession rounded a bend. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous day… Famous Man waves to the crowd. He’s extremely charismatic… happy where he is… how he’d gotten there. Thoughts for the future race through his mind… social reforms… racial equality… global peace…

  The number five comes to mind.

  Five.

  Weird perspectives of the motorcade scene superimpose themselves upon her… something’s… changing?

  Yes, it’s almost as if — it is — the scene was changing before her very eyes…

  “Five,” again makes itself known.

  Popping sounds.

  A street drain.

  Flashes of great pain.

  Books. Top floor.

  … a knoll…

  It happens.

  Lizzie jerks.

  Eyes closed, it’s as if she’s sitting beside Famous Man — yes, she is. She’s pulled from her living room, barefoot, in her White Stag “hearts” over shirt, and is holding a child in her lap, sitting beside this man of fatal distinction, in the open air of a top-down convertible driving through a town.

  Now, she recognizes him.

  Thirty-fifth president of the United States.

  They’re riding together through Dealey Plaza on this fine, fine Dallas morning. Her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy — is actually holding her hand, and there’s a bouquet of red roses in the seat between them.

  Red.

  She can feel it, though, and the number five… that “five”… and impending blackness… black.

  Black, black, black!

  No!, she screams, but her mouth doesn’t work… and again…

  (East-Indian beggar boy)

  Lizzie turns to JFK, to force words — any words — from her mouth, anything to tell the president to get down!, to hide!—don’t you feel it? Don’t you know you’re going to be—

  But nothing.

  Smells exhaust.

  See flashbulbs burst.

  Hears shouts and calls and motorcade noise.

  Crowd noise.

  Knows that her perspective, that what everyone around her sees in this image of hers is that of Jackie, JFK’s wife, not the barefoot hearts-shirt-clad woman with unkempt dirty-blonde hair, an infant cradled in her lap.

  She turns.

  Murder screams through her head.

  It’s not her angst-ridden, desperate face that JFK and the public sees, but the calm, placid face of Jackie Kennedy.

  Pleasantly smiling face.

  Calmly twisting wave of a white-gloved hand. Hair… hat?

  Pink.

  Pink, pink, pink… outfit?

  A kind of “coatdress”—pink… pink hat.

  Red roses.

  Red.

  Pretty, red, thorny.

  Pink.

  She can still feel it, the threat — it wasn’t supposed to be this way — but it’s still there — she can feel it like an oncoming

  (Blaaack… black, black…)

  shockwave that has already happened.

  Unstoppable.

  Pink, red, thorny, black.

  Please, Mister President, you have to get down!

  Too late, it’s too late. Hot

  (red)

  spatters her pink face, pink body, pink life… not once, but twice…

  Pink, pink, pink…

  … husband bowls over… collapses into her… before a black

  (black black black…)

  terror drowns out her soul—

  Lizzie Gordon.

  Trailer.

  Kitchen table.

  Lizzie is staring at the table top and a pencil. The pencil is jammed into and through many yellow pages on her paper tablet, its lead wickedly shattered. She studies the broken tip and its pieces that litter the pad before her. Flickering light from her television dances about the walls around her.

  She stared at her paper.

  Village of the Damned.

  Dallas.

  This made absolutely no sense. None at all.

  3

  Mel Roberts stared into the empty room, dumbfounded.

  What the hell was going on?

  What did he mean he had no parents.

  No parents?

  The words reverberated in his head like a pounding kettle drum.

  How could he have no parents? Everyone had parents! His had to be gone, somewhere, on a vacation — a trip — something.

  But there was no furniture.

  No bed.

  Clothes.

  He flew into the room and flung open the closet doors—

  Clothes.

  Their closet was now filled?

  “This just can’t be…”

  Mel stared at the attire. He turned to leave, but, his knees ran smack into a queen-sized bed, complete with pillows and fluffy comforter. He doubled over onto it, rebounding back against the closet.

  A bed that hadn’t been there moments before.

  “Oh, come on…”

  He looked to the immaculately made-up bed, to the two indentations his hands had just made in the royal blue comforter. To the nightstands on either side of the bed… the hope chest at the foot of the bed… the lamp and pictures on the nightstands and dressers.

  Mel snatched up one of the pictures. It was of a couple, a man and a woman, arms around each other. Smiling.

  He felt acute familiarity. Longing.

  Yes, these were his parents!

  It was all coming back!

  Mel sat on the bed, riveted by the picture.

  How could he have forgotten?

  The accident. There had been a terrible accident… twisted metal. Bodies. Out on… on… Route 20… good Lord—

  He closed his eyes.

  Yes, it all came back… he’d been at a party — parents out on a date. Late night. Drunk driver. Two-lane road. You’re supposed to drive through the deer… but this was no deer… a ’75 Ford flatbed — replete with whiskey dents and hair and blood from a dog earlier in the evening — its driver passed out forty seconds ago… happened to be there… swerving… taking up the entire road…

  You can only do so much… and sometimes… sometimes… enough just wasn’t—

  A connection was made.

  Metal screamed. Gasoline belched. Bodies consumed.

  On a dark, lonely stretch of country highway, a fire quietly popped and sizzled.

  Wiping away tears, Mel carefully replaced the picture on the nightstand.

  Of course, it all made sense, now, didn’t it? He didn’t remember any of this, because… because he didn’t want to. The rooms, they hadn’t been empty — he just hadn’t wanted to remember… to see… the truth. To relive…

  But as he withdrew his hand, he paused, looking to another picture. Grabbed it. Brought it in. It was of a large group of kids lined up in five rows. All smiling. The inten
sity of their smiles and faces and eyes unnerved — he knew these kids… they were familiar to him.

  A baseball team?

  Summer camp?

  Everyone he’d followed through the school system?

  He turned the picture over — no markings. Opened the back of the frame and removed the picture — still no markings, no dates. Just young, smiling, insanely happy faces.

  What was wrong with him? Why was he having such a hard time remembering things? Why was everything so familiar… yet not?

  He put the picture back into its frame and returned it to the nightstand. Mel lay back on the bed, spreading out across the bed as if to touch the memory of his parents, then swung his legs up.

  He stared into the ceiling.

  An automobile accident.

  His parents… killed.

  Dead.

  Alone. Weird pictures. The vibrancy of those kids’ faces staring back at him… murderous nightmares… and it was (he looked to the clock) a spooky time of night to be up and all alone, in a creepy state of mind…

  4

  Lizzie pushed her cart down the aisles of Safeway, pausing only long enough to pull a box of Honey Nut Cheerios from the shelf and toss it into her basket. Okay, there was some nutritional value to the stuff, and it did claim to help kill bad cholesterol and all, but what she was really getting it for was the comfort factor. It brought back warm, cathartic memories of childhood, of late nights up watching horror movies with her dad. It was her fun food. Just enough to settle her stomach from the late-night hungries, while simultaneously satisfying her soul’s need for cozy, endearing, solace.

  Her dad had been a great man up until the accident, and, she knew… beyond. He was one of those rarities who was great while trying not to be. Wanted no part of greatness other than to be part of a family. Her mom, though she’d had her moments, was the strong, silent type. Lizzie was aware of the stereotyping, but that was just how she was. They were. Her mom stood her ground when necessary, but normally rode an even keel. Both her parents were strong willed, and while powerful individuals in their own right, devoted their lives to their family. Frederick Parker (not Freddie, Fred, or any other curt derivative) was a lineman for the state of Colorado, and Libby Parker an occasional stringer for the One Tree Gazette. She seemed to have had a nose for news, always just “happening to be there” before — or soon after — an event had lit up the landscape. She used to say that she never had to search out news, the news found her. And if there was a time where no news was good news, Libby worked her hand at editorials and essays. “Musings from far afield,” she called them. Lizzie remembered her mom always writing, her father always working the lines, but both parents were always there for each other and their only daughter. It would have been daughter and son, but Henry had died prematurely of a nervous system failure. Had never left the Denver hospital. Her baby brother had died a baby. Lizzie knew that episode had so disturbed her mother that she never wanted another after that. The pain had been too great. Her mom, Lizzie had later discovered, had always been haunted by images of giving birth to a still-born.

  Frederick Parker had been a large, powerful man. His father before him had been a lineman and had frequently brought her father along to learn the ropes, so it was only natural that her father had followed in his father’s footsteps. Something virtually unheard of today. His knack for pinpointing trouble spots before they occurred was legendary. Father Frederick attributed it to all those years apprenticing with his dad that he could smell trouble a mile away. He’d also managed to avoid several near-life-ending accidents by pure Providence. One day while taking over for another who’d been working a hot wire, a cable had swung loose and his way. He’d never seen it coming. Fortunately for him, he’d dropped a tool and had bent over to pick it up, when the cable swung past and instead struck a coworker.

  Instantly electrocuted.

  Frederick barely got out of the way as the cable swung back. He knew when it was your time to go, you went, but to have had such a direct part in another’s passing, well, that had been just a little much to handle at the time.

  Unlike many of his day, he never cursed God. Never blamed Whomever was in control of life. People came into this world… lived, worked… and left, he used to tell Lizzie during those late-night weekend horror movie marathons (he also used to tell her that monsters and ghosts weren’t real, but made for great stories), and if no one ever died, then the world would be a sorry place to live in. We all have a limited time on this earth, and it was our job to do and make the best of it — then move on. Clear the way for others. It was our duty, he said, that life would get pretty boring and stagnant otherwise, not to mention severely overpopulated, if no one left.

  It was the cycle of life.

  All one had to do was to observe nature, he would explain, how things came and went. Frederick used to tell her that it was nonsense how folks blamed God for deaths, forever lamenting and cursing God about taking away a human life “in their prime.” Frederick didn’t believe in “untimely” death. And just what would be timely, he posited? No one ever seemed to define that. Just like in the fields he worked in every day, life came and it went, but there was always… life. If it came and went, it had to come and go from and to somewhere. That was where God came in, he told her. God allowed us our lives, and when it was time for us to go, allowed us our deaths. Gory or not, he would reiterate, we all had to die sometime of something.

  It was our obligation.

  And when asked whether or not we ever came back, he was just as philosophical. Her father had said that life was so full of, well, everything… that he was hard-pressed to believe a soul could experience all it needed to experience in just one, meager, existence. Like the seasons, Father Frederick said, just as he was sure there were continuous winters, there had to be continuous springs.

  And it was philosophies like that, watching those late-night weekend horror movies, and eating Honey Nut Cheerios, that Lizzie treasured most. And nearly every time she went shopping, and reached for that tall golden box, the same memories flooded back, and she’d smile.

  Yes, Honey Nut Cheerios was her comfort food, and boy, did she miss her folks.

  Chapter Four

  1

  Lizzie pushed open the trailer door, grocery bags in hand, and lightly kicked the package at her entrance way along the floor before her. After greeting Lizzie at the door with several urgent meows, Lucy gingerly stepped along, heading toward the kitchen, trying to avoid being struck by the kicked-along package. Lizzie deposited her bags on the kitchen table, as Lucy wove in and out of the legs of the table and chairs. The package at her feet was small and brown, with UPS markings. Excitedly, she picked it up and placed it on the counter. She was unable to take her eyes off of it, as she returned to her groceries, removing eggs and milk from the grocery bag and into the refrigerator, cheese and deli meat, fruit and soda. When she was done stowing perishables, she used a paring knife, and — smile on her face — sliced open the package. She pulled out the first of several books she’d been expecting. She held a child’s six-page “Touch-and-Feel-Home” book. It had a Teddy bear, toy clown, choo-choo, and a kitty on the front cover. Lizzie smiled, glancing down to Lucy, now sprawled on the linoleum floor like a cocky Lounge Lizard, her tail tripping out. The Teddy bear’s fur stomach was exposed through a hole in the cover. Lizzie rubbed her fingers along the fake fur, and smiled. Opened the book.

  Let’s explore the house with Chloe the kitten!, it said on an inside page.

  On another it said, Tickle Teddy bear’s FLUFFY tummy!

  On that page was an identical Teddy bear from the cover, only this one’s entire stomach had the fluffy, furry fur she’d been petting. Lizzie turned the page and found Lift the SOFT cottony curtain! on a page with Chloe the kitten sitting beside a vase of black-eyed Susans. Lizzie looked down to Lucy, who just so happened to be looking up to her with a whiskered expression of “Yeah, so?” Lizzie smiled and returned to her book. On the op
posite page a loose piece of material flapped free. She moved it and found it covered a fake window, more

  (people at a table?)

  flowers behind the fake curtain.

  Lizzie closed the book and looked back into the box. There were Touch-and-Feel books on farm animals, wild animals, and baby animals. A book on ponies and one on shapes that kinda looked interesting. Lizzie took out the book on shapes. An orange, gold star, and a cube were on the front. She opened it and flipped through it, checking out the BUMPY orange, SILKY cushion, and FLUFFY pencil case…

  Images of children.

  Thousands of them?

  Millions…

  In her head… they all stood in a field that stretched out as far as her mind’s eye could see. All smiling, all happy.

  Lizzie turned the next page to find SMOOTH sunglasses… and mentally zoomed in on the crowd of children. She psychically giggled and laughed with the energy that radiated from the boys and girls in her image — when someone, way in the back and who stood out from the crowd, caught her attention. This person stood head, shoulders, and torso above the children.

  Turning the page, Lizzie came upon a SHINY magic wand.

  She stared at the word “magic.”

  Zoomed in on the person standing above the children in her mental image.

  Lizzie touched the book’s shiny magic wand and closed her eyes. She knew this guy, and now she saw him… smiling… standing between two children, one hand resting lightly on a girl’s head, the other on a boy’s. There were incredible amounts of energy swirling — arcing — about the images. Lizzie found it harder to focus. She heard the distant-yet-joyous laughter of the children. Felt their excitement…

  When are we coming home, Mommy? one of the children, the boy, asked, still under the smiling man’s hand.

  When, Mommy? the girl asked.

  Lizzie couldn’t answer. Too much emotion, too much energy.

  Vapor locked.

  I… I don’t know, she was finally able to get out. Mommy wishes she knew… you know how Mommy misses you. Every day.

  The two children smiled. Lizzie looked back to the smiling man. Compassion radiated from him, not only for the children, but for her. Specific emotionally charged energy purposely directed toward her.