Fourteen Days(56)

She turned to him. “You all right, Tom?”

He nodded shyly and ran over to her, clutching her tightly.

“This is my boy, Tom,” she informed Richard. “Say hello, Tom,” she said, now directing her voice to her son.

“Hi, Tom,” Richard said, putting on an uncomfortable childlike voice.

The child said nothing, still clutching his mother.

“Don’t be shy,” she said. “This is Richard, Auntie Nicola’s husband.”

Still the boy said nothing.

“Sorry about this,” Karen told Richard. “He hasn’t been very well. I think he’s had a bug.” She kissed Tom on the forehead, and then told him, “Why don’t you go play in your room while mammy talks to Uncle Richard? Okay Tommy boy?”

Tom nodded, hopped off his mother, and silently left the room.

“He’s a cute little one,” Richard said, smiling.

“Yeah, he’s great. Can’t believe how fast he’s grown though. Feels like yesterday when he was crawling across the carpet.” She grinned mischievously. “You and Nic’ll be next.”

He smiled awkwardly. “I don’t know about that. Maybe one day. Still feel like a kid myself.”

“Yeah. One day. That’ll be nice. Trust me—it’ll be the best thing to happen to you.”

Nodding, he quickly changed the subject. “So, anyway, what are we gonna do about Christina Long? Lately, I’ve been worried that all this is in my head. I mean, what if it is? What then?”

“It’s not in your head. How could it be? You found the poster and it had the same name. And the same photo.”

“I know that, but Nicky got me thinking that what if I subconsciously saw the poster somewhere else.”

“It’s possible. But very doubtful. The poster was only small. It’s very unlikely that you would have taken in the name and the photo with one glance. You would have had to pick it up and study it to recall all that information. I know I would have.”

He nodded, convinced. “You’re right. I don’t know why I let her talk me ’round.”

“You let her talk you ’round because you love her and because you trust her. And she’ll never be convinced because—like I said before—she’s not open-minded, and she probably never will be. She’s too scientific. If she can’t see it with her own eyes, or read it in some science book, then it must be mumbo-jumbo. She’s always been like that. But the ironic thing is that all this is science—we just haven’t been able to document it properly yet. Just because our science is still primitive doesn’t mean that the psychic and spiritual world doesn’t exist. It does—I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. Millions of people have seen it. Hell, most people have seen it, they just don’t believe it—or know it.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just it would be nice if she’d believe me even a little bit.”

Karen smiled tightly. “Don’t worry about her. Her belief isn’t important right now. What is important is Christina Long. Now, have you had any more messages from her?”

“Yes. Last night. Well, at least I think I did.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Well, it could’ve been just a dream.”

“Did she come to you again?” she asked. Her eyes were glowing with intrigue.

“Yeah, but only in my dream again. She was sitting on my stairs, crying and bleeding, and she said ‘Help me find him.’ It was horrible, Karen.” He shook his head. “So real.”

Shuffling in her position, she sighed. “Look, it’s clear that she wants desperately for Carl to know that she’s dead, otherwise why would she bother contacting you in the first place?”

He took a sip of his coffee. “So what can I do? There’s no way I can go back and speak to Carl again after what happened. He threatened to call the police, too. Maybe I could write to him.”

“You could, I suppose.” She thought for a second. “I wonder what happened to her. At least if we knew where her body was then we’d have something to tell the police, and then they could speak to him instead of you.”

“Yeah, that would be better. Much better.” He stood up from the couch and began to pace. “Is there any way we can get a message to her? Can’t we have one of those séances and find out more about her? It’s pretty obvious that she’s struggling to communicate with me, otherwise her messages wouldn’t be so vague.”