Each time she sees me hanging around the school, it’s only a ghost like flash.
I don’t want her to recognise me just yet.
From what she’s seeing of me, I could be anybody.
Well, any schoolgirl, anyway.
Albeit a ghostly schoolgirl.
And yeah, she knows I have to be something like a ghost.
Seeing as how no one else can see me.
They walk past me.
Even through me.
Though I only let May see things like this when I’ve got my back to her.
I don’t want her to see my face.
Nope, not just yet.
Tomorrow; I’ll introduce myself tomorrow.
*
Back at home, May doesn’t pick up her cards.
Or her runes.
Or her hexagrams.
I’m worried for her.
She doesn’t deserve this; doesn’t deserve this self-doubt.
Sitting on the side of her bed, she stares at the palms of her hands, wondering; what’s happening to me?
And that’s when the lines on her hands started appearing.
*
She could read the lines.
Read them like she could read the cards; as if she were watching a miniature town form above.
Once again, she sees the girls heading off to school.
Sees Ben warily heading up the hill.
Sees the girls being killed.
She slaps her hands together, like she’s crushing an irritating bug.
She scrubs her hands, like she doesn’t want anything to do with all this anymore.
Like she’s trying to wash away a contagious disease.
She throws herself back on her bed.
Damn!
For a minute there, I was hoping May was going to figure all this out without me having to reveal myself!
Damn that idiot Ben!
*
Chapter 26
I’m sitting towards the back of the class.
There was a spare seat.
Seemed a shame to waste it.
Not that I ever get tired standing around of course, but hey; a girl can take the weight off her feet now and again can’t she?
(Yeah, okay, not that I actually weigh anything of course, but you know what I mean, yeah?)
May can’t see me.
I don’t want her to see me.
Not yet, leastways.
But soon, soon – I’m going to have to reveal myself.
I just need to pick the right moment.
A time when there’s no one else around.
Otherwise, when everyone sees how shocked she is, everyone will think she’s finally ready for the funny farm.
*
My chance comes much sooner than I could have hoped for; May’s sent off on an errand.
A message for another class.
I follow her out into the corridor.
I slow down, letting her get a little ahead of me.
Then I cry out softly, ‘May!’
She turns around.
She sees me.
Her mouth hangs open.
Her eyes spread wide in horror.
‘No no no! It’s not possible!’ she murmurs fearfully.
Then she turns and runs.
*
Chapter 27
What did I say?
That May would be surprised, right?
But not ecstatically surprised, right?
Truth is, it was a pretty easy prediction to make.
*
It doesn’t take any effort on my part to keep up with May as she runs out onto the school lawns.
I’ve got to stay with her really, haven’t I?
Wherever she goes, I go.
But I’ve made sure she can’t see me anymore.
I don’t want her completely freaking out, do I?
She’s frightened.
Who wouldn’t be, huh?
She can’t believe it.
Obviously.
Now she’s really worried she’s going crazy.
I can hear her thoughts whirling around inside her head.
There’s one thing in particular that she’s repeating over and over, trying to come to terms with it, trying to find an explanation for it.
‘I’m haunting myself? I’m being haunted by me?’
See, yeah, that’s who I am.
I’m May.
*
Chapter 28
‘May?’
Heck, as we’re out here, and there’s no one else around, I might as well get all this over with.
We haven’t got much more time to waste.
As she hears me speak, May anxiously jerks around.
‘Stay away!’ she says, backing away from me. ‘Who are you? What’s happening? Am I going crazy?’
‘Well, which question do you really want answering first?’
I smile, hoping to reassure her that I don’t mean her any harm.
‘You’re not going crazy,’ I say helpfully. ‘But obviously, we need to talk.’
*
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m you.’
‘You can’t be me!’
‘Can’t I? But here I am’
‘I’m here!’
She points back towards herself.
‘So am I’
‘You’re there!’
She points at me.
I point back at her.
‘So are you.’
‘You can’t be me! I’m me!’
‘Haven’t I heard you say countless times that people can have a different side to them? How many times have I heard you complain that Ben doesn’t exactly have much contact with his feminine side?’
‘That’s just an expression! It’s not meant to mean theres a different side to – well, it’s not meant to mean there’s someone who’s going to suddenly appear alongside them!’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Of course it isn’t! And why are you answering all my questions with another question?’
‘I don’t know? Why are you?’
‘This isn’t getting us anywhere is it?’
‘On the contrary. We only get somewhere by asking questions.’
‘Yeah, I get to find myself in an asylum! You don’t exist! You can’t exist!’
‘Oh, and so what about yourself? Are you sure you exist?’
‘Of course I exist!’
She swiftly bends down, plucks a blade of grass from the lawn.
She holds it out to me proudly.
‘See, I know I exist because I can pluck this blade of grass.’
‘Like this one, you mean?’
I hold out the blade of grass I’m holding in my own hand.
‘I didn’t see you pick it! But I saw people walking through you earlier. That means you don’t really exist!’
‘Because I wanted them to walk through me. But this blade of grass; see, I can smell it, taste it.’
I hold the grass to my nose, nibble at its end.
‘That doesn’t mean you exist!’
‘You said that that’s what proved you exist!’
‘This is ridiculous! Impossible! I know I exist!’
‘How do you know you’re not just a brain being kept alive in a jar?’
She twirls the blade of grass in front of my face once more.
‘I picked this remember?’
‘Yeah, so your brain tells you. Everything we think we’re touching, smelling, tasting is really just signals being sent to our brain. You might not even be a brain; you could just be a mass of thoughts, all of which has built this imaginary world around you.’
‘So you’re saying I don’t exist?’
She genuinely looks worried, like she’s beginning to fear it might all be true.
I shake my head.
‘No. Of course you exist. But what I’m saying is; and so do I!’
*
Chapter 29
‘Cup your hands May
; look into them,’ I say gently.
She obeys dazedly.
‘What do you see?’
‘I see a massacre; a massacre of girls at this school.’
‘Keep on looking. Don’t turn away.’
Her eyes slowly widen in surprise.
‘Who do you see?’
‘Me; I see me.’
‘What are you doing?’
She grins, like it’s a joke.
‘I’m looking into my cupped hands.’
‘You mean the May you’re seeing in your hands, right?’
I’ve got to ask.
I know what she’s seeing.
But I want to be sure that she knows what she’s seeing.
‘The May you’re seeing in your hands is staring into her hands, yes?’
She nods.
‘Good. Keep on watching her May. She’s the most important person there. She’s the only one who can stop this massacre.’
*
‘Is Ben there?’
I know he is. But I’m asking once again because I’m trying to calm May, trying to show that I’m here to help.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s climbing the hill. Sticking to the bushes; so no one can see him.’
‘You have to follow him.’
‘I…I can’t.’
‘Why? Why can’t you follow him? You’re there aren’t you?’
‘In a different time; I’m there, but in different times to when he’s climbing the hill.’
‘You have to move into his time; the time when he’s climbing the hill!’
‘But I can’t! I don’t know when it’s going to happen! Sometime soon; but I don’t know exactly when!’
‘Yes you do!’
‘I don’t, I don’t! It’s not that accurate, that exact!’
‘Think May; when will he do it?’
‘Soon. The future. Sometime in the future!’
‘He can’t do it in the future May! There’s only one time that he can do it!’
‘That doesn’t make sense! It’s the future, he’ll do it in–’
‘Not the future May! What does he do? He fires a gun, and somehow the bullet ends up in the future?’
‘No, no, of course not! He fires the gun when he’s there, doesn’t he and – the present! When he fires the gun, it will be the present, not the future!’
*
Chapter 30
May’s getting there, but we still have a way to go.
‘So, Ben’s actions can only take place in the present. Which means?’
May shakes her head.
She’s still confused.
‘It still doesn’t help! The present when he does it is still sometime in the future!’
I try and help her a little more.
‘In your hands; what are you doing now?’
‘Nothing! All these girls are about to be killed, and I’m doing nothing! I’m still staring uselessly into my hands!’
‘Not uselessly, May! The girl’s lives are literally in your hands! Why are you looking into your hands, when you should be following him?’
‘Because I still don’t know when to follow him! I need to know when the present – yes, yes, of course! That’s it, isn’t it?’
She looks up at me, beaming triumphantly.
‘That’s why I’m still looking into my hands. Because, just like when I’m setting out the tarot, it’s the only way I’ll see when Ben’s action are taking place in the present rather than in the future!’
*
‘It means you’ll have to act quickly,’ I point out. ‘You won’t know until the last moment when he’s about to start making his preparations.’
‘We’ll have to tell the police–’
‘Tell the police you’ve seen the future? Or tell them the minute you know it’s going to happen? In which case you’re going to have to persuade them pretty quickly to take you seriously.’
She hangs her head despondently.
‘It is impossible then.’
‘No, it’s not impossible. You’ll have to follow him, catch him red-handed and try and talk him out of it.’
‘But what if I miss when he’s about to do it? To catch it happening in the present, I’m going to have to check regularly. What if I’m asleep?’
‘I’m here to help you now! We can do it, May!’
She looks up, bewildered and scared once more.
For the last few minutes, she’s been so busy trying to work out the answer to her problem that she’d effectively put me away to one side of her mind.
‘We? I’m still not sure who we are. Or, more accurately, who you are.’
I grin.
‘Yeah, confusing, ain’t it? I mean, even I said we when I should have said you!’
*
Chapter 31
May’s taken the day off.
Said she’s ill. Not feeling well.
Which is pretty well near the truth, really.
It’s not every day you’re confronted by yourself, is it?
We’re sitting in her room, looking for all the world like a couple of identical twins.
Only, of course, you can’t see me in the large mirror May’s got hanging on her wall.
Well, you can’t see me anyway, I suppose.
Only May can see me.
Because, as I’ve said, I am May.
‘Isn’t talking to yourself a sign of madness?’
May frowns anxiously.
‘It can be a sign of genius,’ I point out. ‘Thing is, our whole idea of genius comes from the ancient belief that Genius was a guiding spirit. Nowadays, it’s reckoned that – you know how the brain’s split into two almost separate hemispheres, right?’
She nods.
‘Sure; a sort of practical side and an emotional side, more or less, yeah?’
I nod. Grin.
‘More or less. It’ll do for now, anyway. See, it seems that the slender cortex we have connecting them wasn’t quite so robust in our ancestors. That’s why they thought they saw their gods talking to them; they were actually connecting to the wisdom held within their own subconscious, but the connections weren’t there for them to realise it.’
‘So if you’re me, how come you know this? I didn’t know this!’
‘Didn’t you?’
I smile.
She grins back.
Neither of us wants to start all that ‘did you, didn’t you’ again.
‘Sure you did,’ I say. ‘You just didn’t know you did. Your DNA doesn’t just contain biological information; it also contains all the accumulated thought of your ancestors. Your mind also stores every experience you’ve ever had, right down to the smells, touch, taste – memories so detailed that if you could recall them, you’d be fooled into thinking you were actually living through it all once more.’
‘Well that’s something else I didn’t know I knew,’ she giggles.
See, we’re going to get on just fine, May and me.
You know; like we were really made for each other.
*
May’s checking out her predictions on a regular basis now.
Early morning is a particular must; everything so far seems to point to a morning attack, probably as everyone arrives at school.
Even so, she checks throughout the day, just in case there’s something in her predictions she’s missed.
Every morning, though, she gets up ridiculously early.
She asks me to wake her up.
She knows she has to give herself as much time as possible to react to whatever she sees emerging in her hands.
She even gets out the cards, the runes, the hexagrams.
Trying to ensure there isn’t anything she might miss.
See, she can feel it’s all getting closer.
The deaths are clearer. More violent.
More gory.
But now, there’s a greater difference.
The May who appears in her cupped
hands isn’t just looking into her own hands anymore.
She’s moving.
She’s following Ben.
*
Chapter 32
One morning, May looks into her hands and says coldly;
‘Today; it’s today.’
*
Chapter 33
May dresses quickly.
She doesn’t bother with a wash.
Me, I don’t need to dress.
I end up wearing whatever May’s wearing, naturally.
That includes a hooded, waterproof coat as it’s drizzling outside.
She runs out the door, shouting out to her mum that she’s got some homework she’s got to work on before class.
‘And I’ve got some cash for breakfast!’
Fortunately, May doesn’t live too far from the school.
Still, it’s quite a run. And she’s pretty much breathless by the time we get to the base of the hill she reckons she’s seen in her predictions.
Everything’s different shades of grey in the rain.
Everything’s indistinct.
May’s view is seriously blinkered by her hood. She throws the hood back, only for the drizzling rain to irritatingly distort everything as it runs down her face, across her eyes.
Her heads spins. This way. That way.
‘Where is he? I can’t see him!’
‘We must have missed him! He must be already climbing he hill.’
May glances up the bush-enshrouded hill, a mass of globular greys dissolving in the incessant rain.
One of the greys, though, is moving.
It’s keeping low.
Moving from bush to bush.
‘Ben!’ May cries.
He can’t hear. He’s too far ahead, the rain drowning out any strength from May’s yell.
‘We’ve got to follow him. Quick.’
In the predictions, we hadn’t seen the rain.
We hadn’t seen anything of what happened to May after this point either.
*
A blur. It was all just a blur.
In the predictions, this point had all just been a blur.
In reality, it’s all just a blur.
The blur of a grim, rainy morning.
Nothing’s distinct in this haze. But we can still see Ben moving up the hill ahead of us.