Seeing Shadows (32 page)

The woman gave a humorless laugh. "That's not too far from the truth. The vardogers are able to enter their person's body but only for a few moments at a time because they're not strong enough to keep hold. The person's soul automatically expels them although the actual person is usually never aware of what's happening. Vardogers can't talk, can't touch other people unless they're in their person's body. Most people would never realize that they're looking into the eyes of a vardoger. But seers can see the flicker of evil in their eyes."

She took a deep breath and continued. "By entering their person frequently over a period of time, vardogers strengthen the connection to their person. We don't think this allows them to hurt other people, but it gives them the power to physically harm their person. Kill them. The vardoger is able to overtake their person once the connection is strong enough to kill them. If the vardoger enters the body at the same moment the person's soul is slipping away, they can permanently attach themselves inside. So the person you see is no longer the same person. That person has died. You're seeing the vardoger that's stolen the body."

The woman paused, as if expecting me to reply, but I stayed silent. I didn't want to believe anything she was saying but my mind was whirring, as past experiences I had long buried rose to the top, corroborating her words.

I remembered the girl from high school. I had never spoken much to her because I usually tried to keep my distance from the people that were in my visions, but she was in my geometry class and sat next to me. She seemed like a nice enough girl, but I remember one day feeling a prickling sensation of being watched and I had automatically looked over at her. Her head was turned to me, her eyes boring into mine with a look of malice I didn't understand. She held my gaze for what seemed like minutes although in reality it was only for a few seconds. She looked at me like she hated me and I didn't understand why. There was no way she could have known about my vision of her. I had no Sarah back then, no one to confide in.

She had then turned away, breaking the intense gaze. I had spent the rest of class glancing at her, but she never looked at me again. When the bell rang, signaling the end of class, she had dropped her pencil as she was packing her stuff into her backpack. I had picked it up to hand to her, wanting her to look at me so I could see the expression in her eyes. She had smiled and thanked me, her eyes clear and untroubled without a trace of the earlier malice.

I suddenly thought of Simon. The night he had walked me home after I had helped him shop, he had looked at me oddly. With a coldness that seemed out of character for him. Could this have been his vardoger? The thought of something overtaking Simon's body was unthinkable so I pushed it away.

But maybe this explained what had happened last night with Jenny's friend Claudia. The way I had reacted to her. To her vardoger? But I still couldn't accept it. I went from thinking I was crazy to wishing I was crazy. That was far better than accepting that there was a world in which doubles were trying to overtake our bodies. That was pure insanity.

"I know that this is a lot to take in right now," the woman said gently. "I wish I could take more time to explain everything to you. To speak to you in person. But there's no time now."

"Why not?"

"Because I've had a vision of your vardoger killing you."

My lips trembled as I pressed them together. I tried to take in deep breaths to calm myself, but I felt as if I was going to burst with fear and anxiety. I wanted this call to have never happened. I would gladly welcome insanity for all this to not be true.

"I need you to know everything so you can protect yourself," she continued when I didn't say anything. "Does your jade elephant still have silver tusks?"

I glanced at the elephant on my nightstand, confused by her abrupt change in topic. The elephant was entirely made of jade except for the two tusks that were made out of metal. The woman's question sounded ridiculous but I answered.

"Yes. I thought they were just made out of cheap metal, not silver."

"It's actually not silver, it's iridium. It's the only thing that shields us, the seers, from vardogers entering us while we sleep. Although they can enter other people at any time, seers are too strong for them. Unfortunately, they can enter us when we're asleep because we're in a weakened state. But something about the composition of the iridium prevents them from being able to enter us. You have to be touching the iridium for it to work. You need to make sure you keep hold of it while you sleep."

I shuddered as I thought about the words Sarah had said I had spoken in my sleep. Was it possible that it had been my vardoger? Did I really need to sleep with the jade elephant to safeguard against the vardoger entering my body?

I would have normally laughed at the women's request, it sounded so fantastical. So iridium was the vardoger's Kryptonite. I didn't even know exactly what the heck iridium was. But there was no humor in my voice. "So why don't we just give iridium to everyone so they're protected against...vardogers?" I said the last word what a grimace.

"Unfortunately the iridium only works if you're a seer. Only seers can tune into the properties of iridium to block the vardoger. The only way to save others from their vardoger is to intervene at the moment when they try to kill their person. The vardoger is in a weakened state because they've spent so much of their energy entering their person's body repeatedly, trying to strengthen the connection so they're able to kill them. When their connection to their person is the strongest, vardogers are also at their weakest. We're able to pull them into us. When this happens and we're touching a piece of iridium, the vardoger is eradicated. A seer's body and soul rejects the vardoger and the iridium neutralizes their energy so that they just become ether being released from us."

"I'm sorry but that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," I said, finally finding my voice. My voice was shaking but I continued. "So you want me to believe that these things are taking over the world, but you people, 'seers', go around expelling them out of the world by pulling them into you and touching a piece of metal." I laughed harshly. "Where the hell do these vardogers come from then? If I'm supposedly a seer, why don't I see them walking around?"

"Vardogers have always been present. They're a shadow of ourselves, our souls. Born when we're born. And you do see them. You just don't realize it. When someone enters a room, their vardoger enters a millisecond before them. You just think it's the person you're seeing. Vardogers are attached to you, a part of you, but separate at the same time. Vardogers don't go around walking on their own. Because they don't exist on their own. At least, not unless they overtake their person." The woman paused. "That's why it's so hard to fight them. Because they're so much a part of the actual person."

"So what am I supposed to do now?" I asked, still not buying into it all. "How do I get rid of my vardoger that supposedly wants to kill me?"

"Unfortunately, it's much more complicated for seers. We can't risk the vardoger entering our bodies to strengthen the connection because vardogers are unable to push out our souls and overtake our bodies with death like everyone else. Our souls are too strong for that. Instead, when they kill us and try to inhabit our bodies, our souls refuse to be eradicated and we end up still in our bodies, coexisting with the vardoger."

My aunt took a deep breath before continuing. "But the vardogers are the ones in control. You just become a helpless bystander, witnessing the vardoger's atrocities, and not being able to do anything about it. Death would be a better alternative for seers rather than having to suffer through that for the rest of their lives."

"What kind of atrocities are you talking about?" I asked. "I mean, it's bad they're killing off 'their' people." I inwardly rolled my eyes because I was picking up my aunt's terminology for this insanity. "But what happens then?"

"These are the people that become serial killers, murderers, dictators committing genocide," my aunt said gravely. "Inherently, vardogers aren't evil or good. They just exist. But the ones that turn - they're filled with evil."

"Wait a second," I protested. "But you said these
things
....these vardogers, only started turning about three hundred years ago. What about all the evil people before that?"

"I'm not saying that every evil person has been overtaken by a vardoger," my aunt said patiently, ignoring my accusatory tone. "There are plenty of people in the world who are evil, regardless of whether they've been overtaken by their vardoger. But there's a precarious balance in our world. There's plenty of evil, but there's plenty of good to counteract it. But vardogers are trying to tip the balance, to engulf this world in pure evil."

This was too much. On one hand someone was finally giving me an explanation for my visions, something I've always desperately wanted. On the other hand, the explanation I was being given basically told me the end of the world was imminent. I was afraid to accept this explanation because once I did, nothing would ever be the same again.

I thought of Simon. The thought that something was trying to kill him, even something I wasn't sure I believed in, was gut wrenching. Even more gut wrenching than the thought that something was trying to kill me.

"How do you know all our visions are correct?" I asked. "I mean, we could be having visions of vardogers killing their people and it actually never happens."

My aunt sighed sadly. "I wish our visions weren't correct. I wish we were mistaken, that the ones we see in our visions are safe. That the only place they're being hurt is in our dreams." Her voice steeled. "But the visions are true. We've been documenting them since the beginning. And we've tried to save as many people as possible."

I hesitated before asking the next question. "How many have you saved?" What I really wanted to know was how many they had lost.

It was as if she read my mind. "We've lost more than we've saved," she replied. Pain colored her voice. And I knew whether or not I believed in vardogers, it was a reality for this woman. She wasn't trying to dupe me - she truly believed that this battle for bodies and souls was really happening.

Her voice strengthened. "But we've saved enough. Each person we save counts."

"So what do you do?" I asked, wondering how this woman spent her life. She couldn't have much quality of life if she spent all her time trying to kill these things. "I mean, do you just snoop on people, waiting for when their vardoger tries to kill them?"

I heard a smile in her voice. "Something like that. But it's not a calling everyone can answer." Her voice sobered. "Your father knew about the visions. But he doesn't believe in vardogers. He doesn't believe such a thing exists, let alone that they're trying to overtake bodies. He just thinks we're all crazy. That's why he didn't want us to have anything to do with you."

I wasn't surprised. My father was all about facts, things that were concrete that you could see with your own eyes. It didn't take much imagination to know what he would think about this whole vardoger thing. But the thing that stung was finding out that my father knew the women in his family had visions of people dying. He had to have known that this was what I had been going through all these years.

Yet he had never said one word to me. Never tried to explain what was happening to me. Regardless of whether my father believed in vardogers or not, he hadn't cared enough to try and help me.

I pushed these thoughts aside. As painful as this revelation was, it was the least of my problems at the moment. A dozen questions were popping into my head.

"You said that vardogers take over the body after they've killed the person. I've seen people die in horrific ways. Fires, decapitation, falling from a building. How do they take over the bodies and start living as the person when the bodies are so mangled?"

"When a vardoger kills their person, it's often in a violent way. Like you mentioned. We're not sure whether it's because they just enjoy it, or if it aids in the transition. Vardogers are able to kill their person, to damage the body, without causing permanent harm to it. It's a little hard to explain, but when a vardoger kills their person, their connection allows the body to recover when the vardoger enters it after having expelled their person's soul."

I shook my head at the explanation, none of it making sense to me.

"So do you expect me to start going around killing vardogers?" I asked, not being able to mask my sarcasm. "That'll be pretty tough considering my schedule's pretty full with classes and a job. I'm not sure I'll be able to slip it in between Economics and serving burgers."