"The Gathering" - Chapter 3

Mind to Mind

I love you, Maria. Yes, he does.

I love you too, Will. Uhh, nope. She doesn’t.

Silence. Dammit. Focus. Focus. Focus. There, got it again. I hope he springs for dinner. I’m broke until my next paycheck …

A snapping of fingers brought me back. “Hello?” Wanda’s dark eyes flashed with annoyance. “I’m right in front of you,” she hissed, whispering as her eyes darted about, making sure she wasn’t overheard. “Can you stop poking around in other people’s heads?”

“I can’t help it,” I sighed, slumping into my seat. “It’s like being in the middle of a crowded room and everyone’s shouting at the top of their lungs.”

Wanda and I were doing our usual fortnightly visits. This time she picked the place, adamantly refusing to step foot into my apartment until I—as she delicately put it—had the CDC certify it clean and habitable. I decided not to tell her my vacuum cleaner gave up the ghost and I’ve been stuck with cursory dustings.

Once a month.

Twice, if I’m feeling especially industrious.

The place she picked was a quaint café nestled among the brownstones of the city’s older section. She didn’t need to worry about people eavesdropping. Besides us, only three other patrons occupy the antique furnishings, a fashionably dressed black woman in her thirties sipping her coffee while skimming the classifieds, and a young collegiate couple sitting up front—Maria and Will. We’re seated at the back.

Wanda arched an eyebrow at me and leaned forward conspiratorially. “I thought you can only do emotions?” she whispered. “Now you can read thoughts, as well?”

“Not really,” I shook my head as I leaned forward. “I think it’s just surface thoughts, or random emotions that telegraph as thoughts. You know, like pictograms?” I sighed as I let my head flopped onto the table. “Coffee, before I expire,” I growled into the table.

A slight clatter of porcelain meeting the wooden surface of the table advertised the arrival of our order. Wanda is having her usual: hot chocolate, toast and marmalade. Mine today was eggs Benedict and black coffee. Momentarily silence ensued as we both dug into our food.

Wanda broke the silence. “So, who were you ‘listening’ to earlier?” she asked, miming air quotes at the word listen. “Anything interesting?”

I motioned with my head towards the couple seated besides the front window of the café. “See those two?” I asked her.

“Uh-huh,” she answered, looking over her shoulder at them before quickly turning back to me. “What about them?”

“The boy Will likes the girl Maria,” I began, observing the couple as I spoke. “Maria is only into Will because he’s well-off. She’s hoping he’ll buy her dinner tonight.”

“And she’s probably willing to put out, eh?” Wanda added snarkily.

“Be nice,” I admonished her. I continued with my study of Maria. “She’s had a raw deal. She’s pretty guarded emotionally, but I’m getting really strong hints of hardships and childhood trauma.”

“Wait,” Wanda interrupted me, her eyes widened slightly. “You can read that deep now?”

I shrugged. Lately—six months ago to be exact—I could reached even further with my readings. Where before I was only reading surface thoughts and emotions, I could now delve deeper. The ease with which I could do so frightened me a bit, if I were to be asked. Then again, I suppose it’s like a muscle one has. Constant exercise kept it firm and strong and capable of scaling higher bars. I kept secret of my ‘exercises’ from Wanda. I had a feeling she might not approve, though I’m pretty certain she might understand—and even accept—the necessity.

And no, Wanda is still one person who seemed immune to my readings. Or maybe I just haven’t found the proverbial chink in her mental armour. I stopped my rumination at the last thought, my coffee paused midway in the act of about to take a sip. What was I thinking?

“What’s wrong?” Wanda asked, pausing in mid-chew.

“Nothing,” I hedged. I faked a smile. “You want to see something else I could do?”

“Ooooh!” Wanda squealed in spite of herself. The black woman looked up from her newspaper and looked at us, alerted by Wanda’s outburst. Seeing no trouble, she returned to her reading. “Show me,” Wanda pleaded, almost giddy with excitement.

“Look at the girl Maria,” I motioned with my head.

As Wanda turned, I concentrated and reached out with my empathic talent. I’ve learned that if I can glimpse a person’s state of mind thereby reading and sensing what emotions they telegraph then by dint of conversion I can make them glimpse and sense what I want them to feel. I opted for something on the side of dramatic and selected the emotion I wanted to push with my mind … Fear, I decided. And pushed really hard.

Maria suddenly froze in mid-speech. She seemed frozen and I could vaguely hear Will asking her what was wrong. I wasn’t really looking for it but I could sense he was reaching out to her. Wanda told me much later that it was as if Will was handing her a live cobra for she froze like a gerbil watching an oncoming predator before she started shrieking in terror. If I had time to reflect later, I would have probably laughed at how the tableau played out.

Will started to reach his hand out to her and she backpedalled in her chair, scrapping it two feet away from him as she shrieked, arms flailing. 

“No!” Maria cried, as her chair tilted and spilled her unceremoniously onto the floor. “Get it away from me! Get it away!!!” The last word ejected at an octave higher.

At the piercing wail she let out, I immediately stopped projecting at her—replacing instead a sensation of ultimate calm and serenity, like mists flowing off the mountains. The change was just as immediate, for Maria’s horror-widened eyes suddenly glazed and her body slumped onto the floor.

A biting pinch on my forearm alerted me to Wanda’s grip, her nails digging into my flesh. Her quiet hiss of, “Stop it!” coincided with my reeling back the mental manipulation I was doing.

We beat a hasty exit, throwing a wad of bills on our table by way of tip as Wanda grabbed me and we hustled ourselves from the café, looking for all the world as if we were rattled by the girl’s hysterics.

On the drive back to my place, Wanda’s eyes kept flicking towards the rear-view mirror. Even without being able to read her emotions I could tell she was agitated and only her self control was all that was keeping her from unravelling at the seams. Although I get the little tell-tale signs she wanted to ask me what happened in the café—the little hitch of breath, the click of her jaw and the half-move gesture of her right hand—I sensed she was second-guessing her options.

Does she really want to find out what I’m capable of?

I was dropped off at my apartment building. Her farewell, while cordial was slightly off. It’s as if she was still trying to balance between the brother she’d known all her life and the man who mind-fucked a girl in public view.

I inwardly grimaced at the verb I used. I couldn’t however deny that—although in bad taste—was apropos. I shook my head, and rubbed my palms together to rid the chill of a mid-autumn afternoon. Tramping up the stairs I casted about with my mind as was my habit now that I’ve established my known range and skills, scanning my surroundings. There was elderly Mrs Lowell contentedly tucking into her lunch of porridge and gravy in 2D. The Hernandez in 3D and the Davises from 4D sitting down to their family lunch, as per their habit on Saturdays. Gavin West in 4C—a friendly instructor-cum-trainer working at the nearby run-down gym grunting as he completed his third rep of squats. The surface scans I did as I alighted towards each level picked up traces and lingering fragments of thoughts and emotions—lust, petty anger, despondency just to name a few—from the silent, empty apartments; their owners perhaps having left for the day. As I was halfway towards the seventh-floor—my level—I get a brief flicker of foreign thoughts flashing in my head.

I froze.

My apartment building was situated in not what one might call the best of neighbourhoods. Therefore, I’m always alert to any changes of thought patterns I detected in my building. I know there are only sixteen apartments occupied, out of the twenty-four in the seven-floor building. Mine is on the top floor, and the only one occupied on that level.

From the angle where I was, with my eye level with the floor I could see the door to my apartment was slightly ajar, with the inner jamb visible. I discerned shadows of footsteps moving inside along the bottom crack of the door.

I gathered my unfurled consciousness from my broad mental scans and re-focused them on the landing. Like an infra-red impression, wafts of mental imprints left their marks—more than one person, I could now tell—in the air on the landing. Concentrating, I detected three differing mind-patterns. They were congregated around the space in front of my door. My empathic ‘tracking’ have yet to be perfected—I couldn’t separate between old and recent mental imprints. The only reason I picked those leftover imprints is because no one—with Wanda and myself exempted—had visited this floor.

I stepped onto the hallway, avoiding the section of loose parquet tiling that creaks whenever someone steps on it. I hugged the wall, my back leaning as I slowly refocused my consciousness into a tiny sliver of probing thought and sent it through the wall. I learned this from Niki, him spending days tutoring me in the basic theories. Then hours of practical application. After we had parted ways, I improvised on what he had taught.

I waited until the probe had breached the surface of the wall. I then stretched the sliver of probing thought into a curtain. Gossamer-thin in my mind, I stretched it until it covered the entire wall surface that made up the inner portion of the wall of my apartment. The very wall where I’m standing on alert, at the outer side on the landing. Then I made the mental curtain move towards the opposite end, towards the other inner side that forms the outer perimeter of my apartment. As the mental curtain moves, they brush against everything they counter with an airy touch—so deceptively light that even another psychic would discount it as a momentary twinge of random lingering sensation.

The sweep completed, I reeled the curtain back in, automatically making a secondary brush before recouping the traces detected by the gossamer curtain into a composite of mental imprints.

Only one person was detected. And he was moving from one place to another—making a methodical search through my belongings. He had bypassed the small kitchen. Having finished with my room, he was now moving towards the living area where my library was situated along with boxes of odds-and-ends.

Not a burglar then, I decided.

I reached into my coat’s right pocket, closing my fingers around the familiar shape of the yawara stick I kept in the deep reach of the trench. I always carry it around my person. At the same time, I gathered my empathy into a focused totality that I visualised as another weapon in my head—again, the lessons Niki had imparted years ago are slowly one by one gaining use.

I pushed away from the wall, strode quietly as I could towards the door just as the intruder’s movements brought him close. A kick sent the door flying open, even as I ducked and bull-rushed the intruder. As my right shoulder caught him—the deep voice grunting as I collided into his midsection, driving the air from him. I brought the yawara up in a backsweep, catching him in the groin. A strangled cry of pain rewarded me even as his right knee impacted into my forehead.

I saw stars for a moment and almost lost the mental attack I had kept in reserve as I teetered back.

I had prepared myself into being slammed into the wall, but the man actually took a step back away from me. A momentary scratching sensation tickled the back of my neck, even as I realized that I’m facing a telepath. His mental attack came as a surprise, but I suppose I should thank the groin-hit. His concentration was off, the attack scattered and unfocused, like a kitten scrambling on a wall.

I switched tactics, knowing I couldn’t win this if I had to fight him on one level alone.

I picked one emotion and threw it at him. Fear! I practically screamed it at him in my mind. It elicited no effect—like throwing a bucket of water against a flat surface. The emotion dashed itself into pieces and disappeared into little droplets that trickled against his mental shield.

I refocused the emotion and amplified it. Horror! I felt his mental shield give slightly. Even then I could sense him shoring up his defences as he launched another mental attack at me.

I decided to switch tactics again, knowing a head-on approach is pointless. Throwing the attack I held in reserve to distract him, I picked up a book—which turned out to be a hardcover Webster’s dictionary and hurled it at him. Even as the sharp edge of the book’s spine clipped him on the cheekbone, I attacked him again mentally just as his attention to his mental defences wavered. It came upon him as a wave of caustic slime—at least, as how I imagined it. Even as it splattered into droplets against his mental shield, the rivulets are corroding away at them, creating running tracks that soon widened into multiple cracks and tatters.

I wasn’t standing idle. As soon as the book clipped him, I attacked him both physically and on a psychic level. I made a strike towards his sternum with the yawara, and a roundhouse left followed. He blocked the second blow with a right forearm block and slammed his left elbow into my face. I could swear there was a clatter of footsteps approaching …

“What on earth … !?” I heard Wanda’s cry of surprise from the door.

No!

I turned to tell her to run away, even as I doubled breathless and in pain when his knee gouged deep into my gut. An elbow jab into my kidney dropped me writhing on the floor. I weakly raised myself onto my hands, blearily staring as he walked towards Wanda, who had crumpled onto the floor, crying in pain. Her fingers were buried in her curls even as tears of pain were squeezed out from her eyes.

For the first time, I could actually read my sister on a psychic level. The pain he’s inflicting on her is likened to being flayed alive.

Seeing Wanda being attacked made something inside me snap. Instead of attacking him, I decided to do attack him again, but with a different method—although I’ve done it several times, slipping inside someone’s mind wouldn’t be my first choice of attack. It was like wearing a shirt one size too big; it fits still, but there is a sensation of it swimming on you.

He turned, his eyes wide in shock, “How did …?”

“… I get inside your mind?” I finished his question, mocking him. I mentally gripped the fabric of thought I had now surrounded myself—his thoughts—and yanked. Hard.

He folded into himself at the pain. His mouth was opened in a soundless scream. I could feel his confusion and incredulity emanating from him in waves.

“Telepaths,” I began. “Always start from the higher functions of the mind. I’m an empath. I deal with the more primal side of your thoughts. The dark recesses and unknown in your id.”

Even as I explained, I wreaked havoc inside his head. Like a viper unleashed among the rabbits, I struck at his mind unflinchingly. Once, twice. Three times. I had uncovered enough of his thoughts to know that he would have killed Wanda and I if given the opportunity. And it wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it. Every time it was with relish. Gleefully so. He’s going to know what it’s like on the receiving end.

So wrapped up with attacking him mentally that I forgot to guard myself physically. His mouth frothing, he rushed at and pinned me to the wall. The bull-rush sent the back of my head into the wall, I could feel the plaster give even as I struggled to maintain my hold onto him mentally. His eyes glazed with madness, foam spitting from his rictus grimace he had his forearm under my jaw, crushing my windpipe. Pressed down due to his taller build, I could find no purchase or leverage to push him off. I could feel myself slowly losing ground as my air supply was cut off. Even my mental attacks is starting to lose power, slowly dissipating in strength even as I kept flailing around in his head—the damage inflicted now infinitesimal in effect.

“Get away from him!” I could hear Wanda as if from a distant, a dull thud sounding as clatters of book dropped onto the floor. She must have thrown several at him in an effort to help me break loose. I could feel her beating her hands on his back, trying to pull him off of me.

My vision swam, I felt my mental grip on him slowly loosen and he is regaining control. The mad glaze of his look slowly disappeared, replace by his former cold cunning. His previous, icy persona I had glimpsed earlier is slowly re-emerging. I could feel myself slipping further, my eyes slowly rolling in my head, petechial haemorrhaging I could almost feel forming in them and I could hear Wanda’s cry of rage.

And just like that his weight suddenly was lifted away from me. I sagged boneless to the floor at the same time my hazy vision made out a large humanoid shape being sent crashing into and out the window. A short, surprised cry came before it was ended with a wet thud. I tried to clamber up but my limbs felt like jelly. Groggily, I casted around me but our assailant was nowhere to be seen. Only myself and Wanda.

Me. Heaving gulps of air into my air-deprived lungs. Weakly trying to get up, and still failing.

Wanda. Standing slightly away from me, her arms held in front of her in a warding gesture, her manicured fingers splayed open. Her eyes were open, shock and horror frozen on her face.

Wanda …? The import of what had just happened would have to wait, as I collapse onto the floor.