(Psychic horror)
When I returned to the hotel, I was burnt out.
Forensics was crowded and busy, not to mention unfriendly. I was half expecting the maelstrom to have followed the corpses, but it did not. Still, places like that still manage to overwhelm me. I fought through it. What I came away with was helpful, sort of.
The bodies did not give me anything, in particular, other than the slightest feeling of resigned calm; a strange sensation for me to pick up, considering. It was not universal, but highly prevalent. I managed to confirm from overtired forensics staff that the bodies had not, as far as they could tell, been touched by scavenging animals. The cuts had not been precise, but what did the cutting had been incredibly sharp. The details were so unusual that most of the staff felt the RCMP would be involved soon. After too long getting all of this, I called a cab and returned to the hotel. I had taken enough cruisers for the day.
Adam had not responded to my earlier text but I sent another update, anyway.
I was still in over my head, yet I had a nagging feeling there was something familiar about it. I might manage to find myself above water if I could pin it down. The hotel room kept giving me a feeling of drunken joy, a strange and welcome distraction.
Sleep beckoned. It had been a second rough day in a row. The forensics area was loaded with psychic energy, above and beyond the mess of recent corpses, which automatically burnt me out.
The dream was remarkably similar to the last. I walked into the clearing, which was empty and devoid of the overwhelming energy I first encountered. Then, the figures appeared, the same as before. I was surrounded before I thought to run, only having enough time to brace myself before they held me as before. Their hands were cold and felt like they were biting into my skin. I strained against them, trying to force my way out, but they were too strong and too many.
“Last warning,” one of them said, more sinister than before. The same bladed object appeared, stabbing me in the same spot, only this time the pain was much more intense; and I was not able to awaken quickly. They were holding me for a moment, just long enough to prove they could.
I woke with the same shock as before. Only this time the pain in my leg was agonizing. It was as though a hot poker had been driven in and electrified. It felt numb from the knee down. It was barely four in the morning, but there would be no more sleep for me.
The pain left me slowly, certainly slower than the day before. Sensation below the knee also returned in a similar fashion. I shook like a leaf for a good hour before my nerves returned. Only one positive came from nightmare number two: I remembered why the maelstrom and void from the crime scene seemed familiar to me. It was a tainted positive, really, but better than the dead end I had been facing.
It wasn’t until nine that I felt halfway normal. I searched my phone contacts for what I needed. Gary Tellmann, luckily, was still on my list. Gaetan Boucanne was not there, but Gary would likely connect me, if we got that far. I was getting ahead of myself, and knew it. Adam needed to approve anyone or anything I might bring in that was out of the ordinary. The media would be involved, and I did not need to be psychic to know that police scrutiny would be high for some time.
I sent a quick text to Adam, stating I needed to discuss something fairly urgent. I made a handful of internet searches on Tellmann and Boucanne to make sure no recent activity of theirs was especially odd. Breaking anything like this to Adam meant due diligence; and I was proposing to introduce a pair who were unusual, even by my standard.
It took me a nearly an hour to jog my memory on Tellmann. How long ago was our last communication of any kind? I knew it had been several years since we visited in person. It was my best guess that our last, meaningful exchange was nearly two years before. We exchanged a few professional emails in a debate over subtleties related to language interpretation during psychic events. Tellmann was psychic, for certain, but his real strength was academic. He had studied all things psychic to a nearly ridiculous level. I mostly used my abilities by feel, like an art more than science. It could be studied, I was sure, and rules found that could be applied and honed; where I fell off with Tellmann was the degree of personal interpretation involved made that study dizzyingly complex. He believed that over time, with enough scientific research, the human psychic nature could be fully understood and explored.
I remember, in one of our earlier exchanges, explaining how I saw the positive application of psychic ability. The vast majority of the world was living completely blind to an entire sense, and probably the poorer for it. Most of those who could sense it either lived in denial, thought they were crazy or explained it away with some rational nonsense that in no way applied. Those who could see it could only catch a glimpse, looking through a tiny keyhole into a large, cluttered, shadowy space; but we could see, at least. I told Tellman that psychics were tiny lights to see by. The light we caste was small, but better than nothing.
Tellman, being on an academic mission, disagreed.
Boucanne was the one I really wanted to get on board. Tellman had psychic skills, but certainly weaker than mine. Boucanne was on another level. His abilities were extraordinary, much greater than anyone else I had ever encountered. Unlike Tellman, Boucanne had gone in the opposite direction of science, embracing all kinds of supernatural, paranormal, mystic and occult practices. The weirder the better was how I saw his approach to adopting new approaches and practices. He was a brilliant psychic, through all the other nonsense, and wrote prolifically about all of it. Even as a I skimmed his most recent blog entries (oh yes, he had a blog) it boggled my mind at the volume of information he churned out.
Adam would be fine with Tellman, even though he was unaware of his worst quirks. Boucanne would be harder to sell, but I needed him more.
John Settger 