The Sister (67 page)

She removed her glove and held the stone in her naked fingers, above his out-turned hand. Her eyes danced. "Are you ready?" she said and dropped the stone into his palm. She closed her eyes.

The weight of it surprised him. His hand dropped a fraction as he compensated for the weight. He was still wondering how such a tiny thing could be so heavy, when he felt something stir. Energy held inside passed through beyond its form and detonated. Miller couldn't have explained the effect in any other way; it started a chain reaction of his senses… A hurricane wind blew right through the depths of him. Tiny particles of shape or form gathered from nothingness to somethingness. The Sister was aware the instant the transference began because what passed into him, transmitted through the airwaves, back to her. Her eyes flew open.

Miller reeled and looked startled as a blur of past events churned through his mind. He had the look of someone who'd seen inside Pandora's Box. Fragments linked; pieces fit. His expression was one of horror.

"Stop!" she commanded, clapping her hands together. "You were not supposed to
see
. I underestimated you. I should never have allowed you to touch the stone!" She snatched the stone back from him.

"Then why did you?"

"Because I cannot touch you directly, it would be too direct and overwhelming, even painful. The stone does the same thing without the pain."

They sat bemused, and stared at each other.

Finally, Miller spoke, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what is that thing?"

"When I first found it I thought it was a meteorite, now I'm not sure. Whatever it is, I believe it to be a gift from God." She rolled the stone between her thumb and forefinger while he observed. Jet-black and naturally shiny, it was a perfect sphere.
What are the odds of it naturally forming that way?

She removed the second glove, and holding the stone clasped in one hand, wrapped the other around it and absorbing what it had taken from him. Consternation crossed her face. "I know you saw the priest."

Unsure of exactly what he'd seen, he nodded. "I saw something," he closed his eyes. He was in a graveyard . . .

"Miller, please put those thoughts from your mind. You were not supposed to see," she moved, her form radiant in the light of the window. He squinted as he searched her face.

"What the hell was that all about?"

"Oh, Miller, how best to tell you?"

A trickle of blood dewed on his nose tip, he wiped it away on the back of his hand. Confused, he grabbed a tissue from his pocket.
I never get nosebleeds.

Sister thought rapidly. This was the first time she hadn't known exactly what to do since she became an adult. Some other things . . . Well, she couldn't control everything. In many ways, it reminded her of what happened with Mick when they'd touched . . . when she'd had the image of him falling in front of a train on a railway crossing. She'd seen his death coming, but she didn't know when, where or how, or even that it would actually happen. She could do no more than tell him to be careful.

After that experience, she'd always worn gloves around people. If her mind was Wi-Fi, her skin was hard wire and the stone a medium in between, its transmission by touch similar in principle to plugging a USB stick into a computer. It was a quirk of fate that only certain people could read it. Already she picked up on Miller's latest thoughts. He was thinking the stone was not a meteorite, or a gift from God.
No, he was examining the possibility it could be alien technology. God is an Alien?

It never ceased to amaze her how people denied the existence of God, yet readily embraced the possibility of alien life. There was no time to tell him everything. She reached out without warning and touched him.

If the stone had sparked an explosion, her touch was like planets colliding, an atom bomb. All resistance fell before it, scorching his senses; his thoughts flattened like trees as her experiences translated into impressions and came in a blizzard of wind, raining down on him from the Armageddon inside of her. He felt like a man who had tasted the sweet, heady nectar of life for the very first time. It enveloped him, and he wanted more.

Their histories exchanged in a matter of seconds, but this time, she lost all control over what passed. Connections forged between them, which could not be undone.

Echoes of her past mingled with his. The black hole in his memory swallowed them up and regurgitated them as his own, there was no way of knowing if they actually belonged to him. It meant that it would be a long time before he could pick them apart again.

Random voices and images ran through his consciousness.

A garish, modern, neon lit church appeared. A voice followed, "You must find another place to live, or he'll find you!"

Me or her?
he asked himself.

"There are many devils that walk this earth, and he is one of them. He has many faces."

Pain, sorrow and guilt chained him with unhappiness and held him down; a vision formed of a choirboy sitting on a pew outside a confessional . . . He'd deliberately timed his confession, moving back in the queue three times, so remained the last to go in.
How do I know this?
A scene from the past played out in his head.

"Bless me father for I have sinned, it's been too long since my last full confession. Since then I've decided you'll not be manipulating me into any more of your vile practices father. I didn't know before… I was only ten years old, but I know it's wrong now."

The priest was calm. "You want to turn your back on all the special privileges your position brings? You no longer want to be in the choir?"

The boy blurted,
"
I'll not be doing those things anymore. It's against God and nature, and it stops now!"

The priest hissed through the grille,
"
It stops when I say it stops—"

"No, father it stops now, or I go to the police!"

"Then go to the police, do you think they will take the word of an illegitimate orphan against the word of a priest?"

The boy didn't make it out of the church grounds. The priest murdered him.

Miller saw it all. Head between his knees, he covered his face and then sat up abruptly at the gravelly sound of his grandfather's voice. "Sometimes you find stray thoughts and tune in. Sometimes they are like ghosts in the air. Strong like they were from one hour ago, or yesterday. Only the strong ones mean anything; otherwise they wouldn't be out there."

He was in freefall. Thoughts manifested; scenes unfolded. Not all belonged to him. A man dressed in khaki, a tall girl.
Bruce, I told you not to go off! Where are you? Bruce!
His mother's voice . . . W
hat is she doing here?
Wandering absently, he telescoped skywards … a birds-eye view, looking down. A little boy tripped over, jumping stones. Faces, hidden for years by time and trauma, came back to him. More and more was stacking up; he couldn't process the information fast enough.

"Move on now, and tell no one," Sister said. The enigma that was her smile became clearer.

Moving on . . . M
iller had been planning to do that for years, the perfect excuse to indulge his dark side at last, he felt as powerful as her. A crazily related thought popped into his head.
How would you like to come back to my place for drinks? You would? How lovely . . . Just pop that sack on your head for me. Oh, boy!

His head spun with impossible velocity and just as he thought he'd pass out, it stopped abruptly.

All track of time had been lost. They stared at each other. Miller had a curious smile on his lips. He was first to break the silence.

"So that's what happened to you . . . When Ryan tried to contact you again, you had left for
Rome. The church recognised you were gifted, and they trained you, effectively to use the gift for the good of people." He had a better grip on how the information had transferred itself into him.

"That's right," her eyes shone. "They wouldn't have wanted me to work for the other side now, would they?"

"It might have been easier," Miller joked.
She smiled at him; eyes wide with warmth, green and bright as the newest leaves that caught the light of the sun in the treetops. "Aye, it might, but I chose the right way. I had to ask myself, would I give my soul to have everything in the here and now knowing I'd be damned forever? It was, as they say, no contest."

The church had had enough of damaging publicity and was looking for ways to fight back. Vera had arrived at just the right time. Besieged by claims of child abuse and at a time when congregations were diminishing year on year; they needed someone capable of sniffing out the corrupt priests and the bishops that protected them. She became a soldier of the church. Known as The Sister; she answered directly to
Rome. She became disillusioned with the way they dealt with the priests she handed them on a plate. They had sent them off to work in other parishes, where after a period of grace, the abuse would begin all over again. She'd lost confidence in the Church's ability to punish their own. Preferring, it seemed, to rely on the day of judgement to administer their justice. The final straw was Father O' Donohue. She'd exposed him, and all they did was send him to another parish. She tried to leave; they refused her resignation. In despair, she ran away. She never forgot Father O'Donohue.
He, who would become a child killer.
Forbidden to intervene, she had to watch like a wildlife cameraman. Some things had to happen, before other things could.

"Sister," Miller said, "The killer priest, Father O' Donohue. I get the feeling you want to see him brought to justice?"

"I did not
tell
you about him. Do what you will, I cannot help you."

A garish looking neon cross over a modern church.
He'll find you.
Miller frowned as the last vestiges of swirling thought drained from his mind.

" I saw something that didn't make sense to me just now, it tells me you're in danger. Is there something I can do to help you, Sister?"

She shook her head, "Not now, but when the time comes, Miller, you will know."

Miller tried to force himself to see more. He succeeded only in wearing himself out.

Rosetta drove him back to the hotel. Drained, he dozed for the whole journey.
Sister has an external power source that I don't have.
He'd recharge his batteries overnight, and leave for home in the morning.

As he drifted into sleep, he thought about Carla.
You should call her, Miller.
In his head, another voice argued.
What would be the point in this somnambulant state?

He sank into oblivion.

The Sister was in his head, in his dreams. She taught him something he'd never have thought possible. When he returned home, he found he'd developed a psychometric ability with photographs, and if he held one, echoes of the sounds captured at the moment the picture was taken, were replayed. A snapshot was exactly that, a snap of sound that lasted a split second. He found it too fantastic to believe until he discovered that he could also see beyond the periphery of the photographs.

It took a while for him to realise he was tuning in to the mind of whoever had taken the photograph, but who would believe him? It was another thing to keep quiet about.
Who could you tell that to without them thinking you're a crank?

Strangely enough, three names cropped up, and they were all women.

Chapter 135

Stella found him the next morning, in bed where she'd left him.

He lay motionless, illuminated under the saintly halo of light the bedside lampshade deflected around his head and shoulders, a beatific smile frozen on his lips. Ryan looked as if he'd been happy in his last moments.

She felt for a pulse, but already knew this time he was gone for sure.

After Miller had left, he'd told her how happy he felt that his long days had finally drawn to a close. He'd confided that he was afraid of something she'd put to him several times, in past discussions.
What if you are right, Stella, what if this life after death … this meeting your loved ones again . . . What if it's all a big lie?
She'd squeezed his hand. "You have to believe in it now, Doctor Ryan," she told him. "Or what hope is there for the rest of us?"
From the look of his face, he could have been winking at her; his good eye closed and that frozen smile . . . She guessed he'd found the truth.

"I wish I could have had your faith," she whispered.

She mused about the rewards of unwavering belief. How good would that have been after living a life believing there'd be a call, a letter, or a knock at the front door one day. She imagined that beautiful moment, when uncertainty was swept away, her sister alive at the door. Her parents had given up, and she had too, save for a spark that wouldn't die. In denial, she was alone, without faith, and it was killing her. She'd never confided in Ryan. Once he'd said something to her, following one of their philosophical discussions.
Many people deny the existence of God all their lives, and then acknowledge his existence by praying to him in their last moments. It's never too late
.
Remember the crucifixion scene? Where the thief tells Jesus he believes in him, and Christ says, 'Today you shall be with me in Paradise'