Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

Yet another apres-monition from my past, she thought to herself.

'No, Madame…not this time,' said Aloysius Bedford. 'You look surprised to see me.'

'Actually…I am more surprised that you can see me.'

'Of course I can see you!' Bedford replied. 'I might be dead, but I'm not blind.'

Destine faltered in her approach. 'Dead?'

'As a doornail,' replied Aloysius.

'If you are dead…then you are obviously not from the present…nor the future. Yet you say you are not an apres-monition? So what are you? I have never been able to commune with spirits of the dead before.'

'Perhaps they just had nothing much to say.' Aloysius gave a deep-throated chuckle. 'Your gifts are still a mystery to you, aren't they? Even after all this time? You truly have no idea what wonders you can perform…what wonders you will perform.' His voice floated upon the air like spring blossom, lighter than the cool breeze that nipped at Destine's bare feet. 'Perhaps it is time that I enlightened you.'

Destine scowled at the spirit before her, its form fluctuating in and out of cohesiveness. 'If this is no apres-monition…how can this be, Aloysius? If that is indeed who you are and not some trick of my mind.'

'What do you think? Do you believe that I am Aloysius?' the ghost asked.

Destine shook her head…which then seemed to evolve into a nod of its own accord. 'I wish you to be…I have so much to ask you!'

'And I have so much to tell,' Aloysius responded, with a playful smile.

'But how can any of this be true? How am I able to see you? To speak with you?' Destine asked. 'As attuned to the spiritual world as I am…I had thought there was supposed to be a barrier between the living and the dead?'

'And indeed there is…yet some wrongs are worth crossing barriers to right,' answered Aloysius, his answer not remedying the confusion in the Frenchwoman's head. 'You are presently on a course laid out by your younger self, a course that has already been long and arduous, yet there is far more to be done before you will see its end. Your bewilderment is causing you to drift from the road…and I am here to put you back on track.'

Destine took a sudden step forward at his words, hungry for more.

'You know? You know of the task that I set myself in those letters? The task to find your journal?' she asked.

Aloysius nodded. 'Of course I know, Dusty. It is my actions that have guided you thus far.'

'Then tell me why I could forget all that occurred in Umkaza all those years ago?' the Frenchwoman demanded. 'So many dead – murdered! How could I have ignored that…choosing instead to write a letter that I had no assurance I would ever get to read?'

'You had assurance enough, Destine,' said Aloysius. 'You had your premonitions to guide you…even if they are no longer your guide at this time. That was the only thread you had to cling to, my dear, the only hope. You knew that you were powerless to undo what had been done…and only by sealing that night within your words were you able to survive. As for how it has slipped from your recall…what occurred twenty years ago in Umkaza was horrific for anyone to witness. But for someone as gifted as you are, it was even more so. It almost cost you your life.'

Destine so wished to interrupt, but something held her tongue. As the ghost of Aloysius Bedford continued, finally she was on the verge of so many answers.

'Your connectivity to human emotion has been a great tool to you in the past, yet on that night in 1833, it was almost your undoing. Back then it was not as easy for you to control…to deafen your ears to the feelings of those around you. Unknown emotions and sensations would come at you unannounced, and often you were unsure which were your own feelings, and which were those belonging to others. On the night that those men died in Umkaza, your senses were wide open. You had no defence. You "felt" every death as though it was your own and the extrasensory feedback almost crippled you.'

'That does not explain why I would forget,' said Destine. 'If I experienced all that pain for myself, surely it is something that would stay with me for ever.'

'The human mind is a conscious beast, my dear,' replied Aloysius. 'And it's propensity for self-preservation goes far beyond your conscious levels. When it is threatened, it does what many beasts do – it runs away. It retreats into itself. Yet no matter how long it curls up and cowers, the danger will always be there. That is why you have no memory of that time. It was hidden away, deep within your subconscious…because your mind knew that should you ever discover it…you would relive all that pain and misery and death all over again.'

'And yet…since I arrived in Egypt…since learning of my warning and finding your journal…I have felt glimpses of my past coming back to me,' said Destine. 'So what does that mean, Aloysius?'

'It means that you are near to unearthing that which you secreted in your memory, Destine,' Aloysius replied, his voice stronger now, more forceful. 'You have strong mental defences, my dear – far stronger than you know, but your reawakening to your past began weeks ago when you decided to come back to Egypt. Back to a place that harboured so many painful memories. Once you had learned of the letters, the stronger the psychic connections to your past became, and with every step that you took, the more your mind was opened.

'It was difficult for me not to reveal myself to you before now, and spell out your task in detail. But it had to be done slowly. At your mind's pace. You had to piece it together bit by bit. Were you to have access to your memories in one fell swoop, the pain would have torn your mind to pieces, leaving you nothing but a mindless husk!'

'I must be imagining this,' whispered Destine.

'You are,' replied Aloysius merrily. 'But don't let that put you off. Soon this will all make sense. Soon you will understand why matters of the mind cannot be rushed. You are a cygnet right now…but soon you shall become a swan.'

'And what is that supposed to mean?' Destine asked.

'You have discovered my journal, you have experienced the atrocity in Umkaza firsthand, and your task is now fully illuminated before you. You know what you must do, and so, now that it is safe for me to relinquish my hold over your clairvoyant abilities, they will soon return…and stronger than ever.'

Destine's mouth fell open, sensing shock for the first time since meeting the spirit, and her lips quivered with fear. 'Your hold? What do you mean…your hold?'

'It was necessary, Destine. For your own good,' said Aloysius.

'My own good? What are you talking about?' demanded Destine. 'What was for my own good?'

Aloysius Bedford's form dissipated slightly, as if it was difficult maintaining coherence. His pale face glanced at the Frenchwoman, seeing her anger all too clearly. 'I had to act to protect you. I have been trapped in this formless limbo waiting for you to catch up with your past, and once it became clear that you were to return to Egypt, I had no recourse but to do what I did.'

'What?' Destine snapped. 'What did you do to me?'

'As an astral being, it is forbidden for me to intervene in affairs of the living. We have discarded our physical forms, and with them…all ties to our lives are cast off also,' explained the ghost. 'But what happened in Umkaza was something that I could not abandon, Destine! Even a spirit can be haunted…and that memory would never fade from my mind. And so, when Fate conspired to bring you back to Egypt, I had to protect you and ensure that the clarity of the message was not diluted.'

'I am waiting, Aloysius,' said Destine. 'Ghost or not, my tolerance for being toyed with is not one that you wish to measure.'

Aloysius held up his hands in submission. 'You assumed that it was the elixir of life that had stolen your clairvoyant gifts from you, but it is not so,' he admitted, dolefully. 'It was I that stole them from you.'