The Athena Effect (2 page)

They didn’t realize that their daughter had found something in one of the books– something that changed her entire world view. In one earth-shaking moment she was confronted by the painful truth that her parents were wrong… unquestionably wrong.

She knew it because one of the books finally put a name to a phenomenon she’d experienced her entire life, and she got the impression it was something to be ashamed of. The book told about people who were able to perceive the visible spirit of living things– it described people who could see colorful auras.

She realized that she was one of them.

Cal had always seen and tasted the colors, glowing clouds of feelings and emotions that surrounded everyone. When she was little, she’d always assumed that everyone else could too, but she gradually came to realize that her parents didn’t know how she was feeling simply by looking at her. She’d tried to explain it to them, but at first they’d laughed it off, believing her stories to be the fantasies of an overly imaginative child.

The colors came in all hues, some saturated, and some merely the faintest whisper of a pastel. A joyful, excited red was sweet, while an angry red tasted bitter, with a bloody metallic edge. Every person’s range of tones was different, but somehow she could tell exactly what they meant. It was like hearing a sad or happy song– she simply knew what people were feeling without being able to explain exactly how she knew.

Every color had a variety of flavors that Cal was acutely sensitive to the meaning of. Each hue had a negative and a positive side, and she guessed that they were like magnets, or maybe electric currents.

She started to play with it, learning how to change her colors at will and push them outside of herself. So far, she’d only mastered projecting them onto animals, making the rooster stop crowing with a sudden burst of bright yellow confusion, or sending a hungry rabbit running away from the vegetable garden in a blind silvery panic.

Cal found that she much preferred the company of animals, because they were true to every color they displayed. There was no confusion with them, because their body language was always perfectly in sync with their emotional states. Only people were false; nearly everyone she saw acted in ways that were contrary to their true feelings.

As Cal grew older, her parents realized that there was something unusual about their only child. She knew their every mood no matter how hard they tried to mask it, and they were afraid when they realized how truly different she was. They warned her to never mention it to anyone, telling her that there were bad people in the world who would come after her if the word ever got out.

She tried to use her ability to soothe her parents when their horrific visions threatened to consume them, but the force of their flashbacks was too powerful, overcoming her fledgling attempts to help. Still, she found that if she made eye contact and concentrated, she could turn them a bit with a soft color, taking the edge off an angry red outburst, or transforming her mother’s pale green irritation into wry turquoise amusement.

On the rare occasions that she accompanied Papa to town on the back of his motorbike she was surprised at the lengths strangers went to hide what they were truly feeling. The face that most people displayed in public had very little to do with their actual state of mind. Cal tentatively experimented with trying to change their colors, but found adults to be resistant. For some reason the townspeople were unwilling to look her in the eyes, thereby closing them off to her attempts to improve their mood.

Nobody seemed to notice that babies never cried around her.

Cal was always happy to return to her country cabin; she saw nothing unusual about the way they lived. Hidden away as surely as Rapunzel in her tower, she read about the things she’d never do or see because of her parent’s all-consuming fears. As curious as she was about the outside world, Cal was content to live inside the pages of a book, roaming the woods like one of the wild creatures she was increasingly able to manipulate.

They grew most of their own food, and Cal’s father did odd jobs in town that earned them just enough money for fuel and incidentals. Cal hunted and foraged in the woods that surrounded them, and her mother kept a small flock of chickens. In the fall, Papa would take her by motorbike to glean the surrounding orchards, and Mama would spend days putting up enough jars of pears and applesauce to last them the entire year.

Cal knew every inch of the forest, and was an expert in edible and medicinal plants. She liked to trek up to the most remote location on the property, a hilltop graced with the ruins of what was once a sizeable house, to harvest rose hips from ancient overgrown bushes that surrounded crumbling foundation stones.

It was a romantic spot, and she would read sitting by the remnants of a brick chimney, watching the lizards scurry on charred timbers that stood as mute evidence of a massive fire that had raged long ago.

Cal had one secret friend, a bearded recluse named Jesse, whose sparse camp she stumbled upon while foraging beyond the boundaries her parents had set for her. He lived an even more solitary life than she did, and she’d visit occasionally, sometimes trading some mushrooms and game for the peppermint candies that he always had on hand. She kept their friendship to herself, realizing that her parents would not approve.

Jesse tended a marijuana plot for someone she never saw, an arrangement that suited his laid back nature perfectly. “It’s medicinal,” he explained, filling his pipe and waxing poetic about Henry David Thoreau, eastern philosophy and mysticism. He claimed to have traveled to India, Morocco and New York City, but his stories grew increasingly circular and convoluted the more he smoked.

Still, he was friendly, and always happy to see her. She never had to worry about troubling flashbacks with Jesse, because his mind was as calm and tranquil as still water. He called her “Artemis” or “Diana”, proclaiming her protector of all the plants and animals. Usually, he just made her laugh, trying to sort out the differences between Greek and Roman mythology in his fanciful stories.

Sometimes Cal wondered about the people living in town, their mysterious lives illuminated by electric lights blazing through curtained windows. They kept tidy houses with neatly mowed lawns, but they all seemed to be masking inner turbulence, and it was always a relief to turn up the unmarked road that led to her quiet little cabin.

The random seizures and night terrors her parents experienced only served as a testament to the dangers of straying too far from home. She realized that there was evil out there that she couldn’t even begin to fathom, and she adopted her parent’s fears as her own.

But today Cal glowed pink with happiness as she trotted home with a great haul of fresh morels– more than enough to feast on and still take the extra into town to sell. There might even be enough money left over for some chocolate, she realized, picking up the pace with a little thrill of excitement.

She rounded the corner and her heart leapt with joy to see Sherriff Brown’s truck parked on the rutted dirt road leading to her door. The Sherriff was a kind man who worried about her parents, checking in on them a few times a year. His initial suspicion about their isolated lifestyle had turned to grudging respect, and on his visits he always brought along a tool or some spare item he claimed to have no more use for.

He knew how much Cal loved her books, and was always sure to include something new for her to read as well. One Christmas he’d even hauled over an almost complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica– over twenty-nine thick and heavy tomes. Cal read them cover to cover that cold winter, huddled by the warmth and dim light of their wood-burning stove.

She hustled up the driveway to find the Sherriff leaning against the hood of his truck, reeling to a stop when she saw his color. He was vibrating with a deep purple sorrow, surrounded by an intensely worried yellow-green anxiety. He shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot.

~

Sherriff Brown had seen a lot of things in his many years in law enforcement, but he could say for certain that this was the worst day of his entire career. He thrust his hands in his pockets and stared down at his feet. He’d been a newly hired deputy almost eighteen years ago when Jenny and David had arrived on the scene– two scruffy kids that looked like something the cat dragged in.

The land they settled on once belonged to David’s grandmother, but there hadn’t been a Mackenzie living in these parts for many years. Stories about the area still swirled throughout the town; tales of a forest haunted by the ghost of Old Lady Mackenzie, along with rumors of witchcraft and demonic goings on. Lingering suspicions kept the locals away, and that suited David and Jenny just fine.

No one ever came looking for them; they paid the property taxes regularly and kept out of trouble. They were grimly determined to hang on and stay out here in the middle of nowhere, despite the overwhelming odds against them. Heck, the Sherriff remembered, they’d even spent the first few rainy months living in an old army surplus tent.

Some folks speculated that they were involved with the drug trade, growing pot on a remote plot hidden away in the deep dark woods. But when year after year went by without any ill-gotten gains appearing, folks pegged them as reclusive back-to-nature types that simply wanted to be left alone.

Odd… But then again, odd was not illegal.

The Mackenzies were always nice and polite to Sherriff Brown, and he admired their tenacity. He looked around at the tidy little cabin with its neatly stacked woodpile and wire enclosed chicken coop. It was a damn shame.

He’d just seen David and Jenny for the last time, and he squirmed, because now he had to break the news to the kid. He heaved a deep sigh, wishing he had a cigarette. A movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see the girl rushing up the long gravel path, her golden hair reflecting the last long rays of the sun despite the advancing gloom. Even hidden under baggy clothes that looked like they’d be more suited to her father, he could still see the beautiful young woman she’d grown into.

He watched her sadly, wondering. Where did all the time go?

When she looked up to meet his eyes she froze, and the bag that she carried slipped off her shoulder and fell to the ground with a dull thud.

~

Chapter Two – ORPHANED

~

“Are you sure it’s the right thing to do?” Mrs. Brown fretted.

“She doesn’t know anyone around here… She should be with a relative.”

“But she’s never even met the woman.”

He cleared his throat, “It’s her only family.”

“It’s not right, the way they raised that child,” she huffed. “You should have done something about it sooner.”

“Like what?” he asked. “Take her from her parents? They may have been a little different, but they loved that girl…” His voice was drowned out by the low hum of a furnace turning on, yet another alien sound to Cal’s ears.

She lay suffocating in a midnight blue pool of grief, listening numbly from the guestroom bed as Sherriff Brown and his wife discussed her fate in the next room. The past few days had gone by in a blur, and the crushing pain in her chest still made her feel as though she could scarcely breathe.

Her parents had been on their way home from the farmer’s market when their motorbike suddenly swerved right into the path of a logging truck. They were killed instantly. The driver was beside himself, but there wasn’t anything he could have done to avoid it. Cal suspected that a flashback had caused them to lose control, blaming herself for not doing something to forestall it. She remembered the eerie feeling she had gotten from her mother that fateful morning.

The good people of the town had pitched in for the burial, laying her parents to rest side by side in the local cemetery. Cal stood in shock, watching the last few shovelfuls of dirt cover the only two people in the world who loved her. A few strangers stood by silently, surrounding her with clouds of pale blue sympathy laced with lemon curiosity.

Sherriff Brown had done a little research at the county courthouse, hunting for any information about next of kin. He finally came across a yellowing antiquity of a deed, and discovered that after being orphaned himself, David Mackenzie had been adopted, and had a sister who was living to the south of them in Santa Rosa.

Cal wouldn’t be eighteen for a few months, so the aunt had grudgingly agreed to be her guardian until that time, whereupon David’s land would officially go to the girl.

Arrangements had been made for Cal to move into her aunt’s condo. The chickens were taken to a local rancher, and the little cabin was boarded up. She watched it all happen in a daze, swept away before she even had a chance to say goodbye to Jesse. She wondered if he would notice when she stopped making her random visits.

Carrying a bag with some clothes and a few treasured books, Cal boarded a smelly bus to the big city. She looked out the window, silently saying goodbye to the only home she’d ever known. I promise I’ll be back, she thought, wishing she could see her parents one last time.

Sherriff Brown and his wife watched the bus pull out of the station.

Mrs. Brown turned to her husband, “My goodness… those
eyes
of hers,”

“I know,” he replied, waving goodbye to the sad, beautiful face in the window. “God bless her.”

The bus ride lasted for three shocking hours that exposed Cal to more different kinds of cars and scenery than she’d seen in her entire life. Colorful billboards with scantily clad women advertised casinos, and some sections of the road were peppered with discarded cans and bottles.