The Sister(144)

Ryan held his pencil lengthways, each end secured between thumbs and index fingers. The light flared against its polished surface. ‘Go on.’

‘She scared me. I can’t explain this very well. She was sad looking, and although I knew she was not from this world – or at least didn’t belong in it – I knew she meant me no harm,’ A tear rolled down Ryan’s cheek. He wiped it away.

‘You see, she was an Oriental woman. I was convinced I'd seen her face before, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where. Not then. And there have been others.’

Ryan shook his head, mumbling, ‘I knew it. You believed so strongly, you created Tulpa’s – thought creatures. If only I'd had this information, I could have studied you. I could have written my book. I wish you'd told me before.’

Miller then said something that completely derailed Ryan’s thought train. ‘She was the shadow under my bed when I was seven.’

‘What? Why didn’t you tell me before?’





Chapter 124



Ryan had the look of a man who'd missed the last train home by seconds, arriving on the deserted platform only to see its tail-lights disappearing into the darkness. Another chance to test his theories missed.

‘You should have told me earlier,’ he repeated, closely examining his pencil in what little light filtered into the room.

Miller cleared his throat. Ryan snapped out of his distraction with a start.

‘That wasn’t all of it. As I said, I never told you everything. I held back on you.’

Ryan nodded. ‘I know. I guessed as much at the time.’

‘I’ve already told you about the drowning dreams and the shadows.’

‘Before we move on, when did you first notice them?’

‘The shadows? It wasn’t a question of noticing. It was about acknowledgement,’ he said, fingering his scar, ‘and that came slowly.’

‘Go on, Bruce.’ He turned over a page of his notepad.

‘Bear with me. When I was given the name Miller, I moved ahead and left Bruce behind with all the baggage. Oh, he was still in me, of course he was. The voice of my guilty conscience, the source of my little intuitions; I think it was last year when I finally realised part of me was bigger than I'd care to admit.’

Ryan rubbed so hard at his good eye it turned bloodshot. ‘Don’t stop on my account,’ he said, waving him on. ‘I want to hear more.’

‘Last year I was on the lecture circuit, speaking about mankind’s forgotten abilities and his close relationships with the supernatural. Something happened to interrupt that.’ The memory wasn’t entirely unhappy. A smile touched his lips. ‘I stayed at a haunted house and it started something growing in me.’

Ryan’s eye narrowed and he laid his pencil down, saying, ‘Tell me.’

‘When I arrived there I had a flash of the past, in the old stable block. I'd had fragments of things I couldn’t figure out before, nothing like this though. This was a sequence, like a movie scene, but complete with taste, touch and smell.’ Miller paused; he looked into a distance beyond Ryan. He closed his eyes and saw the stable boy and the horses form clear in his memory. He shut it out. ‘Since then I’ve noticed other things, and my dreams are becoming a part of that.’

‘You dream of drowning, you blocked it out for so many years. The dreams will pass.’

‘Or come to pass.’

Ryan recalled his diagnosis of unintentional suicide. ‘No, Bruce, you have a purpose here. You have to stop.’

‘I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Doctor Ryan.’ He placed a newspaper page in front of him.

‘Last week, I had a series of dreams about a researcher I'd never met culminating in him sharing a secret with me. He told me someone was trying to kill him.’

‘Okay-y, but what does this have to do with anything?’ Ryan said, holding the paper up.

‘Read the headline. It’s him, Michael Simpson, from my dreams.’

Leading Authority on Cults in Fatal Collision with Car.

Ryan stared at the page for a full minute after reading the article. A tangle of possibilities hung before him.

Miller interrupted his thoughts. ‘Going back to my earlier question, how did you know it was me?’

‘Oh that, I knew you were coming, but I learned that literally moments before you called. You see The Sister predicted you would return.’

‘The Sister. What are you talking about?’

‘You see I first met her in Ireland. I remember it well; it was raining like I'd never known before.’ His good eye searched the past, staring into space, lost in far yesterdays. He related the story as if it belonged to someone else; the metronomic click of his pencil a ticking clock, marking time as the story unfolded.





‘I’m sorry, Doctor. It’s going to take a lot more than that to convince me she knew I'd be coming here this morning.’

‘If you'd met her, you wouldn’t say that. Besides, we don’t have time to work this out now, or at least I don’t.’ Ryan blinked, his disappointment evident.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You should have told me about the Oriental girl earlier. That was the trouble with you when you were a kid.’ He took a breath. ‘You never gave me the whole picture. If you had told me earlier, I might have wrestled some sense out of it. I’ve been trying to write a book, I had a whole chapter planned on phantasms of the living, but it was all anecdotal. I'd never met anyone who had first-hand experience, not that I could truly believe.’