The Sister(164)

‘You’re here, and you are needed there,’ she said, an enigmatic smile touching her lips. ‘She needs your help in more ways than you know.’

‘Ryan said the same thing.’

‘That isn’t what I’m referring to.’

‘Well, that sounds very mysterious. What do you mean?’

‘I see three women in your life; one is no good for you, the other two...either would do for you. Miller, you are going to have to choose, and choices can be painful sometimes.’

‘Sister, what if I choose not to?’

‘I’m only telling you what might be, what you do about it, is up to you.’

A polished black stone slightly larger than a toy marble appeared in her hand. It bent the reflection of the window behind across its spherical surface.

‘I want you to hold this for a moment. What it is, I don’t rightly know, but it is something unique, a gift from God.’

Miller viewed it with suspicion.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sister explained. ‘We can go all round the houses, with me plucking things about you from the air, or we can shortcut things.’

‘With that?’ he asked.

‘It’s something I found years ago, when I was a wee young girl. It helps me focus on people…what they carry inside; it helps me understand what makes them tick. I want you to put your hand out, focus for a minute.’

Both stared at the stone.

It was empty when she first found it, readable only after others had touched it. It never occurred to her it wasn’t empty. There had just been nothing new to transfer into her. If she’d have been of a remotely scientific disposition, she’d have had an inkling of how it worked sooner. She knew she was an aberration. In human terms, she was off the scale, the amplification of her senses out of all proportion to evolutionary needs. She recognised Miller was mildly psychic, but if he were a dog, she was a bloodhound. Her extra perception covered all the senses, and gave rise to the existence of something else in her. A sixth sense.

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 sense. 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 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, 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?