Marilyn Tracy - Sharing The Darkness

Despite the gathering darkness, the evening shadows, Teo could see the woman clearly. He watched her round the corner and rejoin the fringe of the group surrounding Demo. She was covered in mud and her hair was sodden from the rain. But there was nothing amusing about her. Nothing at all.

His gaze remained on her, and he willed her to look his way, to find him in the shadows. He’d seen her looking before, trying, squinting her remarkable eyes against the mist, questing for him. Though he’d felt the shock of her gaze sweeping the branches beside him, around him, seemingly right at him, she hadn’t spotted him, had stared through him as though he were invisible. Her gaze had merely traveled on, taking in the oak, the red and shriveled leaves, the wet shadows surrounding him.

Why couldn’t he read her? Why couldn’t he hear this woman’s thoughts, feel her wants, needs, and the thousand other confused little memories, impressions and dreams that seemed to bombard him from everyone else in the world?

Without even trying, he could “hear” everyone standing around Pablo’s gas station. Demo was filled with pride over being the object of everyone’s attention. Tempering that pride was a heavy dose of relief, not that he had survived the car falling on him, but that he had lived through El Rayo’s touch of lightning. Doro, his wife, was thinking of the pot of frijoles she’d left on the stove when the men had first called that Demo had been hurt. Were the beans burned? Did they need salt, more chili? The baby’s diapers were wet and his nose itched. Jaime was wondering who the new señora was and if she would talk about Teo, about what she had seen. And then there was Pablo, the hardest to read of all of them. His thoughts were half closed, gifts like Teo’s twisting the thoughts into chaos. Pablo was hoping, as he always did, that he would live long enough to be forgiven an afternoon’s trip many, many years ago.

But Teo couldn’t read her at all. Not even a glimmer of her mind was revealed to him. It both frightened and intrigued him, because, for a startlingly clear moment, he had been reaching for her thoughts. Then she had shut him out. He’d felt a distinctive mental slam. It still echoed inside him. Yet before she had slammed the door on his probing, for a few charged seconds he’d seen something in her that he’d never encountered before.

An intangible something, almost like a daydream. And it rocked him to his core, for that intangible something had seemed all too like a promise of hope or connection. But he knew all too well that promises only led to despair and pain—

He shook his head in anger. Damn this woman. Who was she? What did she want? The only other time he’d felt blocked from someone’s thoughts had been at the PRI, and then only because the men in the lab coats had stood behind leaded glass and lead-lined doors. But there hadn’t been any intangibles there, only fear, hatred, need and furious control.

She had touched him. She had held him in her arms, moved the hair on his brow, smoothed the rain from his cheeks. Her fingers had been warm and soft, not healing hands such as his were, yet oddly remedial in their very presence.

Why had she helped him? Was it because she didn’t know his terrible curse? But she had to have known. She had called him by his name. His name. How long had it been since he had been held, even in sympathy? How long had it been since he had heard his name upon a woman’s lips?

She had said something about the PRI. She seemed afraid of it. She had damn good reason to be; if the PRI wanted her, they would succeed. Or had he misunderstood…and she was from the PRI?

He wanted to scream out in anger, lash out in denial. No. It couldn’t be. Yet, wasn’t he weak from the healing? He might have been too weakened from the healing to recognize all the dangers today. He fought the rage building in his lungs, the pain boiling in his heart.

God, he thought, and then stopped. No amount of prayer would help him. It never had, it never would.

He cursed her silently for ever coming to Loco Suerte. She was too damn beautiful and, though he knew nothing more of her than her name, and perhaps a measure of her desperation, he was too attracted to her. She’d stripped him naked not only with her gentle embrace, but by the very fact that she’d touched him at all. He ached for more and, though he knew it was irrational, hated her for that, for making him want her…for making him remember that for him there was to be no touching, no love, no life. Ever.

A host of questions clamored in his mind like the raucous calls of piñon jays in winter, and slowly answers coalesced. She wasn’t from the PRI, but she wanted him to help her son. She would pay anything, she’d said, but he’d told her to leave. And he’d meant it. It was far too dangerous for her to stay. Too dangerous for him.

His thoughts turned to her son and his gaze followed their direction. The child was no more than a babe and was asleep, dreaming of his mother and a host of simple, nothing thoughts.

As if recognizing the intrusive stranger even in his dreams, the small child sat up suddenly and, standing on tiptoe, peered through the rain-streaked rear window. Unlike his mother, the boy located Teo easily. Honey-brown eyes, totally unlike his mother’s deep green, stared from a baby’s rounded features. They were old beyond his years, yet the child still remained an innocent. A small hand raised and fingers waggled in Teo’s direction.

Unconsciously, Teo smiled in response. The simple gesture felt foreign on his lips, crooked somehow. He felt something shift deep inside him, a shaft of pain that somehow transcended the pain he felt whenever he healed or even the joy of making the universe move to his will.

Watch.

He heard the child’s clear command. The smile faded from Teo’s lips as the unfamiliar touch settled in his mind, possibly in his soul. It was cool and light against his senses, but clear nonetheless, and knowing. The boy had known he could talk with him, mind to mind. How?

Watch me!

The little fingers wiggled again, but this time Teo knew it was no wave, but another command. Various objects in the car—a pen, a comb, a red ball, some kind of little man doll and other things—suddenly began to bob around the back seat.

The shaft of pain that had shot through him earlier returned, except this time it twisted, driving the hurt deeper, wrenching at him. The boy was like him, could have been a blond version of himself at that age. The child, her child, was another of the damned.

Then, like his mother’s had before him, the child’s mind suddenly closed to Teo, and a barrier he couldn’t penetrate was welded across the small head.

It was then he understood exactly what the woman wanted of him. And he knew he could help her, but knew he wouldn’t dare. If he spent any time at all with the child, with the mother, he would not survive. Some small, locked away part of him would finally die, because even a moment in their company and he would surely be overwhelmed by painful memories, longing for things he couldn’t have. He would be reminded of far too many broken promises and shattered dreams.

He pressed a question to the boy, but the child didn’t respond. Teo understood the boy like he couldn’t the mother. The child was concentrating on making things “dance” and while he did so, he was blocked to all other influences. He, too, had done that once. But only as a small child.

He could remember the peace, the sense of blessed quiet that came with that kind of focused thought, and longed for it still.

Two people who could block him in one day? Yet, weren’t they mother and child?

He heard her tension-stretched voice in his mind, “I’ll pay anything.” What if—