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“Tell us what you saw today, Jude,” Cain said one night as we sat playing Monopoly.
I sensed an increase in tension―the collective tightening of muscles―a bit like a dog smells fear. Cain’s question wasn’t just idle conversation. Jude lay back on a mattress and Liz opened a hardcover notebook to write the date. The book was already partially full of written-on pages and each page was dated. So that’s what she’d been doing when I’d seen her ‘studying’ in the past: recording their holy visions. Was this some kind of tradition they’d had before I came along?
“I had three visions in the past couple of days, in addition to that farmer again, with the blue radio,” Jude said. He shot the briefest of glances at me. I wanted to ask what he meant by “that farmer again” but dared not interrupt. “One was by the kiosk at Market Lake. I was there getting a cold drink, standing off to the left of the kiosk beside the rubbish bins to drink it when I noticed two boys, maybe eight, ten years old, having a bit of an argument. Dark haired. One fair-skinned, the other kind of brown-skinned, not really dark but definitely with some black in him.” Liz scribbled madly in an attempt to keep up. “He had a red hoodie.” Liz wrote red and circled it. “They came up behind the kiosk; looked like they were arguing over what they were gonna order, maybe. It was sunset so the woman had started packing up the kiosk, pulling in the lollies and stuff.”
“And they were wearing hoodies?” Cain asked. “Winter clothes?”
“Yeah, hoodies.” Jude paused. “But board shorts. Could have been a cooler day during summer or early autumn.”
He scooched over to Liz and told her the address, the precise position of the kiosk, the compass orientation, and the direction the kids had been coming from. They even drew a small map together. Cain and Owen watched and sipped their beers while Jude and Liz plotted all the details.
“Next one?” Liz prompted Jude.
Jude shook his head. “Not as specific. Just a car driving by me as I walked the dog. Blue Holden Commodore, nineties model. I couldn’t see much else, though. It looked like there was a kid in the back. I think it was a guy driving. Couldn’t see a license plate,” he said to Cain regretfully. “I was in McNally Street, walking past number sixteen when it happened. There was sunlight reflecting off the car but that was all I got.”
We waited while Liz scribbled. Finally, she stopped and took a sip of her cool drink, shaking out her writing hand with a grimace. “Out of practice,” she said, and glanced at me awkwardly.
“The last one, I was driving on the road alongside the railway line, testing a customer’s car,” Jude said. “I noticed a kid tagging a wall, you know, spray painting it with her symbol thing. It was dark and she was in a light-colored denim jacket but I could see her profile because there was a streetlamp. Two street lamps, one broken. Red paint coming out of the can. She glanced over her shoulder as I drove past.” His description was so vivid it seemed to hit me right behind my eyes, as though I would see the scene too if I could somehow shut out the real world.
“Night-time?” Cain asked.
Jude nodded. “Yeah. I think the incident was happening somewhere else, though. I didn’t recognize the brick wall she was tagging. It definitely wasn’t on Railway Avenue when I drove back along there later. Plus the street lamps were different. Kind of box-shaped, like they were older than the modular ones along Railway Avenue. Maybe it was an older suburb.”
“Or a past occurrence,” Owen murmured.
Jude shrugged. “Could’ve been. Can’t put my finger on it but something looked out of place.”
I spoke before I could stop myself. “Was it her jacket?”
They all turned to look at me and I shrank back reflexively. How dare I speak during their revelations of visions in which I had no role? I stared at my hands.
“Maybe it was.” Jude was surprised. “Actually, yeah. It was her jacket. Like an acid-wash denim. Kids wear those again now but they were big in the eighties, right? Maybe it was a past occurrence I saw.”
Liz scribbled frantically. The other three kept glancing at me but tried not to show they were staring. I didn’t trust myself to speak again.
“Tell us what you saw today, Liz,” Cain said, taking the pen and notebook away from her as she finished.
“I don’t think you even need to write it,” Liz said. “I saw one vision in addition to, you know. Blue radio.” Cain nodded and I wondered again what it meant. “It was definitely from the past. I was at work today, finishing up with Mrs. Oldham. She’s in a private room but when I turned around I saw a little boy in the next bed. He was wearing pinstripe pajamas and he had a dressing on his foot. There was something in a jar on his bedside table, something small and red. He was sitting up, looking through a comic book. I knew it was long ago because his bed was an old metal bar style bed that they haven’t used in our hospital since the seventies.”
Either her powers of description were excellent or I was caught up in the moment, because I got a vivid mental image of the scene she recounted. I felt like I saw the boy in his striped pajamas, sitting there with his fair hair combed neatly to one side as he flicked through his comic book. The thing in the jar could have been something they’d removed from his bandaged foot ... a rusty nail, maybe. Had he died? People could die from septicemia if their wounds became infected. It didn’t happen very often nowadays but probably back in the little boy’s time ... pinstripe pajamas ... comic book ... the 1950s, maybe? My mind worked, trying to put a theory to Liz’s vision while Cain returned the book to her. He turned to Owen.
“I haven’t seen much for the past week,” Owen said, and Liz exchanged a glance with Jude, “but today when I turned up here I got a picture of a guy driving along a road. He had two little boys in the back. One was maybe four or five years old and the other one was just a toddler strapped into a booster seat. The toddler was asleep, wearing a Cookie Monster T-shirt. The guy had an unhinged look on his face. He was doing well over a hundred, driving past a blue sign. One of those highway exit or distance signs, telling you how far to the next town. I couldn’t read it but I saw the guy clearly through the car window and his lips were moving. I think I know what he said.”
“What did he say?” Cain asked.
“You’re gonna pay for it, bitch.”
“Oh, no,” Liz breathed. “Is he going to hurt someone, Cain?”
Cain shook his head helplessly but the number of questions he asked Owen meant that twenty minutes later Liz had filled four pages of her ledger with incredibly minute details.
“Owen’s getting close,” Jude muttered to Liz. “He’s nearly seeing the critical event. What he saw was a definite precursor.”
“Primary colors,” someone said, and it was only when they all turned to look at me that I realized the words had come out of my mouth.
“Huh?” said Jude.
I cursed myself. Why couldn’t I shut up? “You’ve only mentioned primary colors in your visions.” Of course, they must already know this fact, but it was as though nothing short of clapping my hand over my own mouth would stop me. “Maybe the colors you see are more like ... representations of the real colors. You might be seeing blue for green, or yellow for a light tan, or whatever.” I clamped my lips together, able to stop myself at last, and listened to the stunned pause.
“She’s right,” Jude exclaimed. “I’ve only ever seen red, blue or yellow. You guys?” Liz nodded.
“How did we never notice that before?” Owen sounded chagrined.
“One other thing,” I said, encouraged by their words but still wishing I could just keep my mouth shut. “You both saw a guy driving a car with a kid in the back.” I directed it at Owen and Jude.
The two of them nodded, not getting it for a moment and expecting me to continue. But that was all I had to say. Then realization dawned and Jude snapped his gaze over to Owen.
“Yeah,” he said. “I saw one kid but there may have been another. I saw it from a strange angle; I coul
d only see the back of their heads. If there was a smaller kid in there, I doubt he would have been visible.”
Liz bent over, writing again. “A blue car,” she mumbled.
“A four door Commodore sedan,” Jude recalled. “With a tow ball.”
Owen nodded. “Rings a bell.”
“This is wonderful!” Liz started bouncing on the mattress in excitement. “Owen, you must be so close! We’re starting to get echoes of your visions, to build yours up, like with Cain.” She glanced at me as though unsure whether she should have said that. But her caution lasted just a moment, and then she grabbed my hands to bounce me on the mattress with her. “Nice work, Frankie! Who would’ve thought you’d be―” She stopped with a laugh and I completed her comment in my head ... Who would have thought you’d be useful?