Hindsight (9781921997211) (2 page)

CHAPTER

2

I looked at the clock on the wall again, willing the seconds to tick by. I resisted the urge to drum my fingers on the timber of the kitchen table. The sounds of scoffing coming from the corner finally ceased and Shadow sauntered over to the table and jumped onto a spare chair. It was a remarkably elegant manoeuvre for the nine and a half kilo cat. In human terms it'd be equivalent to a hundred-kilo gymnast leaping onto a balance beam.

The minute hand finally shifted and with a sigh of relief I plunged and poured myself a large mug of coffee, then added milk and two spoons of sugar. The aroma, rich and dark with just a hint of vanilla and cinnamon, teased my nostrils as I took my first sip of the day. Closing my eyes, I let the hit take me. The blend was my own secret recipe and it was heaven in a cup. Opening my eyes, I saw Mum wrinkling her nose. Even after more than ten years of watching me drink coffee every morning she still can't get used to the idea. In her world there is no situation that can't be improved by a cup of tea.

As I sipped and slowly felt the tendrils of warmth and life seep into my limbs I listened to snippets of the conversation between the two people who were my entire world.

‘I'm going into town later today,' Mum said. ‘I thought I'd stop in and have a cup of tea with Mrs O'Grady. Last time she came to visit there was a shadow hanging over her. I'm sure her sister passed last night.'

Surprising as it might seem, this was normal conversational fare in our household. The women in our family are what most people describe as ‘gifted'. In Salem we would have been burned at the stake but there you have it; we were blessed to be born in an era of relative tolerance.

Mum can touch someone and see glimpses of their future. She dresses it up a bit for the sake of the townsfolk and pretends to be reading their palms. Gran and I both know that palmistry has nothing to do with it. She's also selective in what she tells her clients. I always know when she's seen something that makes her grieve: I find her in the same place in the garden, sitting under the oak tree and looking out over the bay. She looks older and sadder, like there's a weight on her shoulders. It's part of the territory. The sight is a burden as much as it's a gift.

‘Well, if you're going into town could you drop some chamomile and peppermint at the store? Mr Johnson rang me last night and he's sold out again,' Gran said. Gran has the most marvellous herb garden. If some people have green thumbs I think Gran must have green arms because there is nothing that won't grow for her. It's part of her own version of the family gift. She can help people to heal by channelling her energy into them. Plants and animals also respond well to her touch. I've often wondered if Shadow's panther-like proportions have as much to do with the affection she lavishes on him as his love affair with his food bowl.

She turned away from the stove and piled a mountain of pancakes in front of me. I've given up on protesting. There's no point; there's nothing that makes Gran happier than feeding her family. To be honest, it's pretty hard to resist her cooking anyway. I've resigned myself to having more curves than I probably need and to exercising for at least an hour a day to ensure they don't turn into bulges.

‘I'll stop by on my way. I need to get some more candles anyway. Is there anything you need, Cass?' Mum said.

I forced down my mouthful of pancake and took a deep breath. ‘I think I might come with you. I want to go to the library. Apparently they have some amazing new historical texts.'

Mum and Gran both fell silent. I could hear the birds singing out in the garden accompanied by the sounds of Shadow vigorously washing his ample pelt and the grandmother clock ticking away next to the pantry. I plastered on a smile that I hoped looked more real than it felt. ‘I'll be fine.'

Mum was the first to recover. ‘Good, well, perhaps I'll stop in at the library as well. I need a new book.'

If you knew my mother, you would know this was an outright lie. Her idea of a good novel is a soppy romance and she probably reads three of those a decade.

‘No, really, Mum, I want to go by myself and stay for a few hours. You'd be bored stiff and you've got things to do anyway.'

I deliberately turned my attention back to my breakfast without looking at Gran. I knew the expression I would see on her face: it would be worry and sadness all rolled into one.

We finished breakfast in silence and I went upstairs to shower and get dressed. I knew that I was taking a risk but I'd made up my mind. I couldn't spend my entire life cooped up in the house, as much as I loved the place.

The cause of all the angst was my own special version of our family gift. The first seven years of my life were unremarkable; I was an ordinary child, leading a pretty average life, going to school and coming home. The only thing unusual about me was my eccentric family. Mum and Gran decided I had no special talents. For some reason I'd missed out. That was until Gran took me into the neighbouring town of Clifton one day when I was nearly eight.

I was crossing the road with her when I froze in the middle of the road. Gran tells me that my eyes glazed over and I just stood there until I let out a piercing scream that sliced down her spine like a knife. All I remember is being behind someone else's eyes. I turned as a car hurtled towards me and screamed as metal crunched into bone. Then, as soon as it had started, it was over. I was still standing in the middle of the road, cars were beeping their horns and Gran was trying to move me onto the footpath.

The experience left me shuddering and crying on and off for days. For a few brief seconds I'd been someone else. I'd felt their fear and seen every detail of the car as it bore down on them. I'd seen and somehow recognised the face of the driver. Worst of all though, I felt the impact.

Mum made a few enquiries through her extensive network of clients and found out that back in the early fifties, a local girl had been run down by her boyfriend while she was crossing the road. He was in a jealous rage because she'd broken it off with him and he thought she had another lover.

That was the first time my gift manifested itself. Mum and Gran hoped that it was a one-off but I think deep down we all knew better. The really horrible part about it is that out of all of our talents, mine is the strongest.

As time went by we came to realise that all I have to do is pass over a place where someone has died suddenly, where their spirit was wrenched from their body, and it happens. The greater their fear and pain, the stronger the vision. As I got older and started going further afield it started happening more often. Each episode left me feeling like I'd been killed along with the victim.

Thankfully we lived in a place with a low crime rate but that didn't account for the people who had died in violent accidents or by their own hand, and my gift didn't seem to be limited by time. A death one hundred years ago felt the same to me as one yesterday. The earliest I'd experienced dated back almost one hundred and fifty years. It was a teenage boy killed by his father in an alcoholic rage.

Jewel Bay is a quiet town for most of the year. Settled in 1890 by a few farming families, today the stable population is about seven thousand, if you include all the outlying farms and properties. It's nestled along the rugged southern coastline of South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula between Clifton and Fairfield. Fairfield is the largest town in the region and most of the infrastructure for Jewel Bay is run out of there. In summer, Jewel Bay explodes to about nine thousand as city folk descend on us. Over the years, the townspeople have developed split personalities, running small farms and properties for three-quarters of the year and then turning their hands to the tourist trade for the summer months. They run B&Bs, farm stays, cafés, tour groups, give riding lessons, surfing lessons, run fishing charters, bake cakes and biscuits; the list is almost endless and for nearly four months a year the town booms before settling back into the slow and steady rhythm of the quieter months.

For someone with a gift like mine it's a reasonably safe place to live. As I grew up I got to know the hotspots where deaths had occurred. Some I discovered by accident but most I researched in the local records. By the time I was a teenager I'd developed a very detailed map in my head of all the places I could and couldn't go. In some ways that gave me a false sense of security.

The crunch came when I was nineteen on a trip into town with Mum. She'd tried to talk me into staying at home, she said she had a bad feeling about it but I'd carried on like a pork chop until she finally gave in. At that age my mum's gift for seeing into the future tended to infuriate me. I thought it was a gross invasion of my privacy. Even though I had developed the knack of blocking her attempts to read me, when something affected all of us, as it often did, she could usually get a pretty good take on it.

Things were going fine until we walked into the new pharmacy. The store had only opened a few months before and we both assumed it would be a fairly safe bet, ‘phantom free' as I liked to call it. Nothing in the local history told us any different. An abandoned building had stood on the site before it was redeveloped.

I took about three steps into the crowded store before a wave of searing pain and despair hit me. I was seeing through the eyes of a young woman — my mouth, hands and feet were taped and I could hardly breathe because my nose was swollen and blocked with blood.

A man came into view. He had grey eyes and hair so pale it was almost white. He stood in front of me and showed me a long thin blade. Slowly, savouring every moment, he started to make a series of cuts along my arms and chest. Each cut was like fire, the cold steel sent pain shooting along my nerves. I tried to scream but couldn't.

Finally, everything went black and I lost consciousness. I woke up in hospital. My head throbbed and swam as I looked around me. Gran and Mum were sitting by my bed. Gran had bags under her eyes and Mum had been crying.

What followed was a series of tests to see if I had epilepsy or any other abnormalities of the brain. Mum told me I'd collapsed in the pharmacy and had what they thought was some kind of fit. I'd banged my head as I'd fallen, too, and given myself concussion.

Gran and Mum understood what had really happened, of course, but knew better than to try to explain it to a group of doctors, who would more than likely want to book them in for tests if they started giving paranormal explanations.

After a few days I was sent home with a bunch of pills I knew I didn't need. I wallowed around feeling sorry for myself. I hardly left my room. I had nightmares all night and slept all day, exhausted and depressed. In my dreams the man with the white hair and grey eyes was always there, waiting, his knife glinting in the light.

Mum and Gran were at a loss and decided the best way to deal with things was to let me come to terms with it in my own way. They brought me trays of food and hot cups of tea. One day Gran came into my room and put some copies of old newspaper clippings in front of me. Twenty-three years earlier a girl had gone missing after a party. They found her body abandoned in a park near the site of the new pharmacy. Her hands, feet and mouth were tied and she'd died slowly, losing blood from a series of cuts her murderer had made over her arms and torso. He'd killed her slowly and painfully, torturing her.

‘I'm so sorry, Cass. I knew about this one but it never occurred to me that the site of the pharmacy might be where she died.' Tears glistened in her eyes.

I reached out and gave her a hug. ‘Don't be silly, Gran. I knew about this case too. There was no way you could've known she died there. Even the police assumed she died in the park.'

‘Well, at least you know who she was now.'

‘Yes, and I can stop avoiding the park.' I gave her a watery smile. ‘Did you know her?'

‘Not really, she was a lot younger than me. Her family had only just moved to Jewel Bay. I met them a couple of times but they were a bit suspicious of your mother and me.'

‘Ah — the two witches on the hill.'

Gran smiled. ‘It's three witches now, dear, and yes, some people prefer to keep their distance.'

She was being polite. The townsfolk fell into three categories. Some people were happy to know us and make use of Mum's and Gran's special talents. Others didn't want to believe in anything except for what their five senses told them and preferred to keep away from us. They wouldn't cross the road to avoid us; they took a polite but distant approach.

The last category covered the people who would probably have fitted right into Salem in the witch-hunt days. They didn't bother to disguise their contempt or animosity. They thought we danced naked under the moonlight, sacrificing small children and worshipping Satan. Thankfully there weren't very many of them.

I looked down at the photocopies Gran had placed on top of my rumpled bedspread, then reached over and switched on the bedside light. The face of a pretty young woman looked back at me. She was probably in her mid-twenties. She looked like she had fair hair and light-coloured eyes. Her name was Kerry Sampson. She was laughing.

I scanned the text. The police had questioned some local men and rounded up the regular shady customers for questioning but none of their enquiries yielded any solid leads. In the end it was assumed the killer was from out of town. Kerry was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a comforting spin from the local police. People could start getting on with their lives without looking askance at every person they met in the street.

I put the papers down and looked up at Gran, who must have been anticipating the question that was already forming on my lips.

‘So what should I do, Gran? You know I saw him. I can't stop seeing him. I'll never forget what he looks like. The police were right you know, I've never seen him around here.'