Luke knew she dreamt prophetically – witness the dream she told him of all those years ago, when they were both thirteen. Admittedly she only told him after the event but she had her reasons and by then, even if she
had told him (and
he would have believed her) there would have been no getting out of going on that trip.
And that it turned out so horrifically was nothing to do with
psychic over-ride as such. Yes, it had involved psychological manipulation, the ‘divide and rule’ thing, and
he, that man whose name he no longer cared to mention (not because he had not got over the experience – and he thought to a small degree he never would because it was part of him) was fully grown and had well-honed his methods.
All they, at thirteen, had had was the sort of knowledge of each other that came with growing up together, but even so there had only been the two of them who had had the guts, the self-belief, the understanding of the need for urgency to even
try to combat it. All those hours of whispered urging the others to believe, to understand what the man had been aiming at, in that room filled with what Dee kept calling ‘janky’ furniture, the stained mattress and folding metal chairs, white enamel paint mostly peeled off, but rusty-edged where it hadn’t. Every time Dee said the word Luke thought of ‘jankers’ and remembered his uncle who had told him jankers was an army prison, which could equally apply to this.
Much of it had been physical control, which was why every time the four of them had had to lay and listen to the fifth one who was in with
him, to hear the whimpered anticipation and the aftermath sharp yip of pain, it undid all the talk of ‘together we can beat him.’
In the end it had just taken two, but because there was only two, and because the rest weren’t with them – hadn’t been able to be brought to see sense or the need for action – those two had had to carry out a far larger task, and keep it secret from not only
him but the others too. So big and with such consequences that they had had to claim it an accident, to keep their part in it a secret, to lie about what happened, both to the others and subsequently to everyone who ever asked. You’d’ve thought that would mean their loyalty to each other would be forever steadfast.
You’d be wrong.
But, back to her. Back to today and how he’d got here.
Was it due to her hyperinduction? Her entering his mind, his dream and causing him to make a plan to come back here? Truly not knowing until she reappeared that that was what had happened?
He could no longer say that was impossible.
A selection which for once I’ve been able to incorporate into an on-going piece of work, whose provenance owes much to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday
http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html and continued development to the daily prompts on Thinking Ten
http://www.thinkingten.com and may well become the follow-up to my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel ‘Not wanted on voyage’, for which I’ve just about finished the first draft.
I.)
hyperinduction -
v. When someone psychically overrides - controls - the will and actions of another person. (Source:
Alphas, Season 1, episode #1: "Pilot"; original air date: 7/11/11)
II.)
janky -
adj. - Inferior quality; held in low social regard; old and delapidated; refers almost exclusively to inanimate material objects, not to people.
III.)
yip -
adj. -
n.A sharp, high-pitched bark; a yelp.;
intr.v. To emit a yip; yelp.
