Salem's Sight (12 page)

“
When she passed my
grandfather let me have it and told me its story.”

He brought his hand up to the girl
that looked like me and let it hover over the picture. “It was war
time and couples were getting married left and right. This was a
painting of a group of bridesmaids celebrating at the beach after
they sent a newlywed couple off on their honeymoon. They danced in
a circle as the groomsmen watched. My great uncle painted this of
them before he had to ship out himself.”

He paused contemplating how to say his
next words and the pause was so lengthy and his stare so intense I
knew he’d be dropping a bomb.

“
He was engaged to the girl
who resembles you.”

I tried to not have my eyes bug out at
that interesting fact, and hoped his taste was like his great
uncle’s.

“
She was only sixteen when
he shipped out so they were too young to get married. The strange
thing is every single groomsman that was paired with these
bridesmaids died in the war. Every single one.”

What made the whole thing even more
tragic was the way the girls looked in the picture. Especially the
one who looked like me. So full of joy. Love emanating from her
eyes. No wonder this painting was a comfort. You could feel the
love in her gaze. “What happened to her… the one who looks like
me?” I asked even though I had a pretty good idea.

“
She stayed in town,
eventually married and settled down here.”

“
My grandmother?” I asked
hoping he had the answer.

He gingerly took the painting off the
wall and turned it around. Written on the back was ‘My Marie Louise
the day I proposed.’

I clutched the frame and held on
tight. It was my grandmother all right. Young, happy, and in love …
with someone other than my grandfather. I wondered if my mother
knew.

“
So if your uncle hadn’t
been killed in the war, we might have been related,” I said, the
pitch of my voice rising at the end of the sentence.

“
I for one am very glad
we’re not.”

The way he said it brought on a blush
of 9.2 on the Richter scale. I was pretty glad too.

“
Maybe this is some kind of
cosmic justice. Like the universe decided they didn’t have enough
time. They didn’t get a chance, so…” I wasn’t sure what to say.
It’s not like I could say maybe we were intended for each other.
That would have been stupid and extremely embarrassing.

He nodded. “Yeah, this is kind of
Twilight Zone, don’t you think?”

“
No doubt,” I said thinking
about how “weird” was quickly becoming my normal.

“
I have a favor to ask
you.”

“
What kind of a favor?” I
raised one eyebrow and he started laughing.

“
Remember our deal about me
painting you? Well, I’d like to paint a companion to this one. A
type of close up of your grandmother, only it’d actually be you.
I’d like to paint you in a similar outfit with your hair up and the
necklace on.”

I grinned and remembered he wanted me
to model for him. What an awesome idea. “On one condition. I’d like
to borrow this for a week or so. My mother needs to see it and she
can help me with finding a dress or maybe making one. That might be
the only way we can recreate it. And my mom can sew.”

Robby hesitated, the battle keenly
evident on his face. This painting must have meant a lot to him and
that alone sent my emotions soaring.

“
I promise we’ll take good
care of it and that you’ll get it back soon.”

“
I know you will and it’ll
be worth it to do the close up. It’s funny. I’ve wanted to attempt
a close up before, but something always prevented me, like I knew
the right time hadn’t come.”

Then I thought about the painting and
Robby’s dad. Let’s face it, if it was in his mom’s room near the
end of her life then his dad would have been in contact with it a
lot. “Hey, how come your dad didn’t recognize me?” I
asked.

“
My father isn’t into art.
Not mine and not my uncle’s. He wouldn’t have noticed if his own
likeness had been in the picture. That’s why this was given to me
and not him.” He ran his hand over the frame affectionately, like
greeting an old friend.

“
My grandparents, now
that’s another story. They recognized you right away. That’s one of
the reasons he came into the store when you were there. My
grandmother went to get him when she saw you. He remembered your
grandmother and asked if you looked familiar to me when you came
into the store.”

I needed to sit down so I went to the
only thing there was to sit on, a bench up against the wall. As
soon as I sat there I saw why the painting hung where it did. With
the barn windows open and the light shining in, the painting was
illuminated and there was an unearthly tranquility.

This must have been the perfect place
to think or just relax. And I wondered how long Robby had come up
here to this spot to unwind and gaze at someone who looked like me.
It was hard to take my eyes off the painting the way the light was
hitting it, but I needed to look at Robby. “Why didn’t you tell
me?”

He laughed like it should have been
obvious. “What? That I like to sit and look at a picture of your
grandmother?”

It sounded sick when he put it that
way.

“
Now there’s a great
opening line. Hey, want to go out with me? And by the way I have a
picture of your grandmother in my loft and I use it for
inspiration.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, that
would have been one bizarre pick up line. I would have thought you
were stranger than… than,” I’d been about to say me, but couldn’t
without explaining. “Stranger than anything.” I finally settled
for.

In spite of all the weirdness I just
couldn’t seem to bring myself to tell him that I inherited more
than just my grandmother’s looks.

Things were freaky enough as they
were.

CHAPTER ten

Crack. Crack. Crack. The loud popping
sound exploded in my ears and I shivered.

Bolting up in bed I grabbed my head
and held it hoping it wouldn’t implode. I was grateful for the
darkness. Bright lights only made my headaches worse. And they’d
been more frequent lately. Since my head was still foggy with
sleep, I had to concentrate on the sound that woke me.

Then with an instant clarity I knew
what the sound was. I’d heard it on television often enough, but it
was never as real as it had been a minute ago. Never as
frightening.

And I’d hear it again. That’s what
terrified me so much, the knowledge that even though it wasn’t real
yet, it would be. Slinking in my bed hoping it could somehow
protect me from my own mind, I tugged the covers close around me in
an attempt to stop from shivering. But it didn’t help because the
quivering didn’t come from cold, but from dread. I didn’t want this
to get any clearer, didn’t want that sound to turn into sight and
sensation so that it would flood my mind overpowering
it.

Skyler stealthily stalked over and
meowed. Then he began to circle the way he did before, like a plane
waiting for clearance to land, and abruptly halted right under the
light. Finally he sat and fixed his eyes on the ceiling staring up
at a darkened fixture.

“
Anyone there?” I whispered
in the dark.

Skyler meowed, chortled then moved to
the crook of my arm and settled in for a cuddle. I started to pet
him and not much later I began to relax. Finally my headache
subsided a bit and my heart rate went back to normal.

I glanced around the room, my eyes as
adjusted to the darkness as the cat’s. Just because I couldn’t see
her didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Not wanting to risk the
possibility she couldn’t read my thoughts, I voiced them. “I’m
going to need some help with this one, Gram. I don’t know what I
can do. It’s real, isn’t it? It’s going to happen. Someone’s going
to have a gun. But where? When? I need help, Grandma.” I waited
motionless and listened to the silence praying for an
answer.

None came.

****

“
So what do you think is
going to happen?” Berkley asked. She sat at the computer looking up
more information on ESP. If she kept reading everything that was
out there, pretty soon she’d be the resident expert.

I shook my head. “Not sure. I know
something is going to happen with a gun, but I don’t know what. The
gun will fire three times. That’s what I heard, three gunshots. But
that’s all.”

I started pacing hoping it would help.
“The strange thing this time was I only heard the shots; I didn’t
see anything. That’s what’s so frustrating. There’s no point of
reference, nothing to attach any meaning to. No person. No place.
No other sound but the gun.”

Berkley squinted as if looking for
something and began biting her lip. “Think. There must be
something. You just don’t remember it. Try harder.”

“
I have,” I yelled then
felt guilty. “Sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you. But I’ve
tried so hard to focus, but there’s nothing to focus on, just those
damn popping sounds.”

Berkley turned away from the computer
to face me. “Sure it wasn’t just popcorn?”

I looked down at her and made the
concession that there are times when even really smart people say
really dumb things. “No, believe me, I know the difference. The
feeling that came with it was indescribable. Sheer terror. The kind
of fear…” My voice cracked and I couldn’t go on. I didn’t have to.
My hands came up to my head as if trying to block out a memory that
was trying to take root.

“
Okay, so it was just an
isolated sound. Maybe there are other noises, background noises
that might help you to identify a place. Let’s try to focus by
doing more mind exercises.”

“
The Zenner deck?” How in
the world were the cards going to help me? It didn’t matter, at
that point I’d try anything.

“
We’ll start with that.
Then move on to a few more drills that I’ve read about.”

It was scary how good at the Zenner
deck I was becoming. So after only a few tries we moved on to other
exercises.

This time Berkley wanted to work on
relaxation techniques. Not quite hypnotism, but in the same vein.
Relax enough to let the mind focus on its own. She did them with me
so it felt more like just hanging out with a friend than trying to
find a shooter.

We started by taking deep breaths in
through the nose then exhaling through the mouth. It’s a cool
activity. As we did this we focused on releasing stress by starting
at the first chakra point at the top of the head. We continued
through all the chakra points until all stress completely
dissipated.

If nothing else by the end of our
‘session’ I felt a lot better and was much less tense.

Still, I knew no more about the
shooting.

“
Okay, you can’t be the
only game in town.”

Game? Berkley thought this was some
sort of game? “What do you mean?”

“
There has to be another
psychic somewhere in the vicinity and maybe if we go see this
person…”

“
Brilliant. Berkley, you
always know the right thing to do.” I hugged her
fiercely.

“
Let’s check this out
online. Yahoo’s yellow pages should have the info we need.” A few
mouse clicks later and the address of closest local fortuneteller
was being placed into Mapquest. Seconds later we had step by step
directions.

It wouldn’t be a short walk, so we
decided to take our bikes. I mean, it’s not like I was going to ask
my parental unit for a ride. Hey Mom, I want to check out the local
competition and see if I can get some help solving a crime. Oh
yeah, that would go over big.

By the time we got there we were both
a little winded because Tower Hill Road definitely had the word
‘hill’ in it for a reason. It’s one rise after another like the
bumps on a roller coaster. Walking it isn’t bad, but biking up the
inclines is just short of masochistic.

We should have turned around the
second we laid eyes on Madame Charlotte’s humble abode. The neon
light in the window was of a palm. A marquis that looked older than
me was somehow attached to the porch, which had been peeling paint
for at least the past few years.

Madame Charlotte either wasn’t getting
much business or she wasn’t psychic enough to put what she was
making to good use.

The steps creaked as we walked up, but
it didn’t alert the people inside to the fact that they had guests.
The doorbell had a piece of cardboard taped over it so I knocked
loudly on the edge of the screen.

A woman in her mid to late twenties
came to the door and solemnly ushered us in. The inside of the
house needed as much TLC as the outside did.

The entranceway had dingy white walls
that not only needed to be repainted, but could have used washing.
There were dirt marks and fingerprints that looked like they’d been
there for years. The floor had old mop streaks covered with a layer
of dirt, which crunched under our feet as we made our way
inside.