‘Kirby’s right,’ Carter said. ‘Jane’s powers are incredibly strong, but she’s been in denial for years and blocked them out. Self-delusion is a very cunning inhibitor. But she needs to learn to accept what she is and learn to use it to protect herself. If she doesn’t this place will rip her apart.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Can I come in?’ Carter said from the doorway of Jane Talbot’s bedroom.
She was lying on the bed, her eyes wet with tears. She sniffed, rubbed a hand across her face and turned her head away from him.
‘I’ll take that as a yes then?’ He sat down on the bed next to her. ‘You can’t keep running from it, Jane.’
‘How long have you known?’ Was she the only one who didn’t know?
He shrugged. ‘Since I first met you.’
‘Why have you never said anything before?’
He reached out and stroked her hair. ‘It wasn’t my place to question you about it. I figured you had your reasons for blocking. I know better than anyone how hard it is to deal with a gift like this.’
She rounded on him. ‘It’s not a gift; it’s a curse! I’ve spent my life trying to force it out of my mind. Do you realize how difficult that is?’
‘I think I can appreciate it. What I don’t understand is why you felt you had to.’
She turned away from him again and lapsed into silence, her fingers picking at a loose thread on the counterpane.
He pulled out two cigarettes, lit them and handed one to her.
She sucked smoke greedily into her lungs. ‘Thanks.’
‘Look, Jane, you need to talk about this.’
She rolled over onto her back. ‘I never wanted it. Even when I was very small I realized that I was different from everyone else, and I hated it. I remember playing in the park with some friends. I couldn’t have been much more than ten. We were on the swings. There was another little girl there, Melissa. We never really liked her, but she used to hang around with us because no one else would play with her. She was on a swing; Freddie Carpenter was pushing her. I was on a seesaw with another girl bouncing up and down. All of a sudden I felt a piercing pain in my head and everything sort of shifted out of focus. But in my mind’s eye I could see Melissa reach the apex of her swing and let go of the chains. I saw her fly through the air and hit the ground, her arm twisted underneath her. Gradually the image cleared. I looked across and Melissa was still on the swing, squealing with delight as Freddie pushed her higher and higher. Then, suddenly, when she was almost level with the top of the swing she let go. I saw her fly through the air, heard her scream. And then she landed. I can still hear the snap of bone as her arm broke. It was horrible.’
‘Horrible, I agree, but not your fault.’
‘Wasn’t it? I didn’t like her, and I was angry that Freddie was paying her so much attention.’
‘So, you’re saying you made it happen?’
‘I don’t know. Not for certain. It may just have been a premonition. But it might have been something more. All I know is that I started to block out the feelings, the visions. And I was pretty successful…until I hit puberty. I was fourteen when my grandmother died. I killed her.’
Carter stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’
Jane rose from the bed, walked across to the wardrobe and stared at her reflection in the fu l l-length mirror. The room behind the reflection shrank away and she was looking at herself in her teens; small and slight; big, dark eyes enhanced by the ultra-short elfin haircut.
‘She’d been with us for a few weeks. My grandfather was in hospital and my mother suggested she come and stay with us. Gran didn’t drive so she was reliant on my mother to take her to and from the hospital for visiting. We’d never gotten on. She was like my mother in many ways, but more so. More dogmatic, more prudish, more unpleasant. She came home from the hospital one evening and just started in on me, criticizing my clothes, my hair, my schoolwork, my friends…She told me I’d never amount to anything, and that I would always be a disappointment to her.’ Jane laughed harshly. ‘My mother’s continued that theme ever since. Anyway, I started to answer back. As I said, I was fourteen and my hormones were in turmoil. She slapped me and I slapped her back. After that I was sent to my room. Christ, I was furious; furious with her and furious with my mother for taking her side. I sat there, seething, angrier than I could ever remember being before. My head was pounding, almost pulsating. I think I must have blacked out, because the next thing I remember I was lying facedown on the floor and there was a terrible buzzing in my head, like a fly was rumbling around behind my eyes. I couldn’t think straight; I certainly couldn’t get up off the floor.
‘And then I started having these visions. Flashes, pictures; like watching a DVD on fast-forward. I saw my grandmother walk from the bathroom and head towards the stairs. At the top she seemed to stumble and trip. And then she fell. She tumbled down the stairs like a rag doll, arms flailing, her head smacking on the wall, on the risers. She landed at the bottom, and I could see from the way her head was positioned that her neck was broken. And I was so pleased. Absolutely triumphant, even though I knew it had only happened in my own imagination.
‘A few moments later I heard them, my mother and my grandmother, talking outside my room. Mother wanted to come and see if I was all right, but my grandmother wouldn’t let her. “Let her stew, Brenda. The little bitch needs to see the error of her ways. You’re too soft on her.” They stopped talking and I listened to the silence for a while. Then I heard the toilet flush.
‘I knew what was about to happen. I could have run out of the room and intercepted her, but I didn’t. I just lay there on the floor and listened. I wanted to know what would happen. I remember it made so much noise. First there was the cry as she tripped and lost her balance, and then there was this clattering and crunching as she fell down the stairs. I could picture every sound. I knew when her head hit the wall, and when her leg caught against the banister and snapped. Finally the noise stopped and I knew it was over and that my grandmother was dead.
‘My mother never got over it. She’s been punishing herself ever since for the fact that her mother died whilst in her care. And she’s been punishing me too, for years.’
Carter came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Jane, what you’re describing is a premonition. There’s nothing in what you’ve told me that leads me to think that it could be anything more than that.’
‘Even if you’re right, and I’m not sure you are, with this…gift, this curse, comes responsibility. I could have stopped it from happening. I didn’t. I just lay there waiting, wishing for it to happen. You were talking to me earlier about guilt. Well I’ve lived with guilt, Rob, and it’s been informing my life ever since that day. It’s the reason I got into psychology, in order to understand what my motivations were…are. I came to work for the Department so I could study psychic phenomena firsthand. That guilt has driven me forward.’
‘And at the same time, totally repressed you.’
‘Yes.’ She said the word quietly and calmly but her body tremored. When she turned to face him, tears were trickling down her cheeks. Carter wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She let herself be held. She needed to be held. ‘Sometimes, it gets too much,’ she said, her voice muffled by his shirt.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘Do you feel up to telling me what you experienced during the séance?’ Carter said.
They were sitting on the bed. Jane had dried her tears and was feeling stronger. Although she hated to admit it, just having him by her side was giving her that strength. ‘Just random images. Nothing really coherent.’