Anton Strout: Dead To Me

Downing the rest of the juice, I attempted to further shake off some of the weariness and felt slightly better for my effort.

“Well?” Connor asked with a certain amount of boyish hopefulness. Connor was back to business. He wanted something personal from this test, but what?

“Well, it’s not part of any case we’re working on,” I said. I raised my eyes. “This is something specifically fromyour past, Connor.”

He kept his face poker-straight and returned the dispenser to his pocket.

“Why do you say that?”

I scrunched up my face as I tried to find the words. I explained what I had just experienced in full detail right down to the dull look on Connor’s youthful face.

When I was done, Connor chuckled. “So the dopey-looking kid is me, huh?”

“Hey,” I said defensively, “it was your mop of sandy brown hair that gave you away more than your Stepford expression. Besides, you should be thrilled these days. You’ve really outgrown that Cro-Magnon look!”

I knew that seeing the world through another’s eyes was a particularly invasive procedure and I left out how hard young Connor had cried, mostly out of kindness but also because I didn’t want to risk breaking the trust we were developing as partners. This was the first time he had ever let me use my powers on anything personal of his and it meant a lot to me.

“What about everyone else in the vision, kid?” he asked. “Tell me who they were. I need to see how accurate your power is.”

I thought for a second. “It seems obvious that the older kid must be your brother. And I’ll take a stab that the woman was your granny.”

“Why do you say that?” Connor asked.

“She did exactly what my grandmother would have done,” I said, laughing. “I was hella-accident prone.”

“All right. Good so far,” Connor said, nodding. He pulled the unidentifiable PEZ dispenser back out. “One last piece. The PEZ dispenser?”

“Easy,” I said. “Spider-man.”

He sat there looking both saddened and amazed. “Astounding,” he said. “I know we deal with these kinds of minor miracles on a regular basis, but I tell you…being on the receiving end of it, when it’s actuallyyour life being told back to you…well, that’s a horse of a different color, kid.”

I nodded. “But I’m curious,” he continued. “You sounded unsure that we were at the Cape? Why couldn’t you tell? I mean, yes, we were, but you couldn’t tell that?”

“Not for sure,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m a passive passenger in these visions, not a driver. I’m only able to take in details of what the younger version of you specifically saw. I can’t force him to focus on any signs that might tell me where I am, but I do pay attention. Nothing screamed out ‘Cape Cod’ directly, but I remember the town of Amity fromJaws, so it seemed like a fair assumption. The way my visions happen, I can kind of fast forward and rewind them a bit, but they don’t let me be in control of what I’m allowed to see.”

“Maybe we can change that,” Connor said with encouragement.

I smiled with the tiniest hint of pride and sipped at my coffee. Feeling triumphant, I asked, “That older kidwas your brother, right?”

He nodded in response but his face grew dark. Gone was the amazement of the last few minutes, replaced by the more familiar look he used when distancing himself from a case.

“I’m sorry,” I said, breaking the silence. “Is there bad blood between you two? Do you not keep in touch?”

He stared at the floor for several moments, just long enough for me to feel truly uncomfortable.

“Not really,” he said softly. “My brother and Ihaven’t talked in years, as a matter of fact, but it’s not what you think. It’s not like we had a falling-out or anything. He went missing about two years after that summer. It was another one of our yearly trips to the Cape, like the one you saw, and he just disappeared one day while we were all at the beach. Busy day, lots of people, and he was just gone in a heartbeat. That was the last any of us saw him. Big police investigation and everything.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry. I had no idea…”

Connor clapped me on the shoulder, reached back into his pocket, and pulled out the dispenser with a nostalgic look.

“How could you, kid? I had totally forgotten why I had kept this thing anyway. Came across it while searching for some old hex dolls. Hadn’t thought of it in years. Everything got kinda cloudy when he disappeared, you know? I’m just glad you were able to catch a glimpse of him in your vision, kid. I’d give anything to see those days again. That’s gotta be something.”

Connor had hinted at learning more about my kind of power, and now it made a bit more sense. Through teaching me, he hoped to awaken some dormant psychometric power of his own to track down his missing brother.

“Maybe I could help you manifest the power,” I said hopefully. “I even picked up one of the departmental pamphlets about recognizing the signs of psychometry in others.”

“Clairvoyance or Clair-annoyance: You Either Got It or You Don’t?” he asked. I nodded, but he shook his head. “Been there, read that, kid. It has surprisingly little to offer on whether it’s even possible for me to be taught or if it’s simply something a person is born with.”

Seeing the melancholy look on his face, I was more determined than ever.

“You never get even the tiniest of visions like these?” I asked. “No flashes, glimpses, maybe something you might have labeled as dйjа vu?”

Connor shook his head. “Nothing. I guess it’s not in my area of expertise.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. “I’ll be damned if I can’t teach it to you somehow.” I paused. “So you’ve only got the one, then?”

“One what?” Connor said, confused.

“Area of expertise,” I said.

Connor nodded. “That I’m aware of. In fact, you’re sitting across from it.”

“Huh?”

Connor leaned in and whispered, “Across from you. The brunette.” He gestured toward the woman sitting on the couch next to his chair.

I tried to appear casual as I glanced her way, pretending to check out theMaltese Falcon poster on the wall behind her, and found myself staring once more at the fetching woman I had made eye contact with earlier.

Outside of her natural beauty, I saw nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Great skin, smartly dressed in black pants and a dark brown leather blazer. I judged her to be in her late twenties with an elegance that radiated from porcelain-like features perfectly framed by a river of wavy brown hair. Luckily, she wasn’t looking directly at me this time. I congratulated myself for stealthily sneaking a peek at her and avoiding any awkwardness. I leaned across the table toward Connor.

“Women are your expertise?” I whispered. “What about her?”

“Oh,” Connor said matter-of-factly, picking up his iced coffee and taking a lengthy sip, “she’s dead.”

I often imagined how cool my life would be if I were in a movie. I would say all the right things and have all the right reactions in any given situation. Most importantly, I would no doubt be as cool as I have always imagined myself, but at that moment in the Lovecraft Cafй, I found that reality was having no part of my delusions. As soon as Connor mentioned that the brunette was dead, I felt a chill run up my spine and I literally jumped straight out of my chair. Apparently, I had taken the remedialDeadside Manner: Staying Cool in Troubled Times seminar for nothing. I helplessly watched myself with the same type of slow-motion detail that I used in my visions.

My foot caught the edge of the coffee table, causing an alarming clatter of cups as it began to flip over (-1 to me for causing a commotion). I started to fall, but not before my replacement coat billowed out around me like bat wings while I spun out of control (-2 for appearing spastic). As I fell back, I accidentally kicked Connor’s coffee right out of his hand (-3 for punting my partner’s drink).