A Guardian of Innocents (9 page)

His response was unexpectedly jubilant, “Sure, man! I can getcha in! No problem.”

“You know I’m nineteen, right?”

His expression fell into disappointment, but I saw the joke form in his mind before it ever had a chance to slide out of his mouth.

“Shit, really? Damn, I thought you were
fif
teen.”

With tongue in cheek, I smiled a little bit to be polite. Truth was I was more than a little sensitive about my baby face, peaches n’ cream complexion. It’s always made me look younger than my age. For women that might be a good trait, but it sure as hell isn’t one for men.

*          *          *

Per Bo’s advice, I took some of my spending money and bought some nice, stylish clothes at one of the more pricey stores at the local mall.

“You wanna look like you got some money to spend so the girls will pay attention to you,” Bo explained, “Cuz if you don’t, they’ll take one look at that man-child face of yours and say, ‘Hmmm, didn’t he bag my groceries at the store last week?’”

I didn’t want to smile at that smart-assed remark, but my facial muscles betrayed me by stretching my lips into a half-smirk. I was figuring out that Bo loved to find a person’s soft spot, the underbelly, that one thing he could exploit that would drive his victim nuts.

I was one of five men that arrived together at the Hunter’s Den that night after rehearsal. There was me, Bo, another guy from theatre named Lloyd and two guys from Bo’s band that met us in the school parking lot.

Bo was the designated driver, and we arrived at the strip club in his gargantuan, box-shaped van. While the vehicle’s outside was covered in hail dings and various rust formations, it spoke volumes about Bo’s mechanical abilities when the van (though a relic probably from the seventies) ran with only moderate engine noise.

Through the mind’s eye of my adoptive father, I had seen strip clubs. I thought I knew what to expect: sleazy skanks dancing around poles drunk (and probably high) while the DJ churned out mostly country tunes with a little bit of classic rock and maybe some 80’s hair metal. Before I walked into the Hunter’s Den, I had no fuckin’ clue there even
was
such a thing as an “upscale gentlemen’s club.” 

The women of this club weren’t the glossy-eyed junkies I’d prepared myself for. They were very likely the most beautiful girls I’d ever beheld in person, outside of TV and movies. The club itself was immaculately clean. The floor was carpeted, with not even one piece of trash or cigarette butt blemishing it.

We found a table and seated ourselves in some large posh leather chairs. I spent the next twenty minutes or so enraptured by the scenery, forgetting my reasons for coming here. The entire place was dimly lit with animal-head trophies adorning the walls (not that I’m into that shit, I don’t find much sport in killing innocent animals from a safe distance) and the dance-techno music pumped out a constant bass from the speakers you didn’t so much hear as felt.

Bo turned to Lloyd, visibly frustrated, “Take those damn sunglasses off! This place is too damned dark for you to even see anything. You’re too much of a tight-ass to be Howard Stern. Quit trying to be
cooool
.” 

That last word fell out of Bo’s mouth with the disgust of a guy who’s trying to shake an amorous dog off his leg. But Lloyd just sat there and pouted, refusing to budge. I could only assume the reason he and Bo were such good friends was because Lloyd was the complete antithesis of Bo. While Bo was a fun-lover who could breathe fresh life into any dull party threatening to end early, Lloyd was the kind of person who wouldn’t even smile politely when someone told a joke. He’s that one guy you might see at any social gathering who looks bored and disinterested, and acts as though he doesn’t know anyone.

I fully enjoyed everything for about the first twenty minutes. I had seated myself so I had a clear view of the door, but had my back been to the entrance it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d been talking to one of Bo’s friends, when an urge instructed me to glance at the solid oak double-doors.

A half-second later, he walked in. Big Bad Galen. He ambled into the club with a slow stride that made me hate him all that much more. It was a deliberate John Wayne wannabe walk, the kind that screams:
A douchebag has entered the room! A douchebag has entered the room!

The rage I felt just then could have landed me in prison had I been wearing a gun that night. Until then, I’d seen Galen only in a blurred vision where the air around me had felt thick and gummy. And now he’s here in front of me taking a chair by himself at a table halfway across the gentlemen’s club.

I wanted to get him tonight. My mind was working, calculating, trying its damnedest to figure out a way to get that done. I felt like a rattlesnake, coiled up at the very back of a rat hole, watching with malevolent, beady eyes as my prey enters the habitat I’ve secretly invaded.

“You okay, man?” Eli, Bo’s drummer, asked. He’d been going on about a band named Korn that he thought was “absolutely tits, man.” (Whatever the hell
that
meant.)

Bo turned to me with a smile, “You’ve only had half a beer. Do not even
try
to tell me you’re drunk.”

I smiled back, “You just
wish
I was. Probably hoping I’ll pass out, so you can have you’re way with me.”

The guys had a good chuckle at that one, even Lloyd couldn’t help but grin, at least that was until Bo retorted, “I don’t want any of your man-bootie, Jess. Besides, I could never find an asshole that fits tighter than Lloyd’s.”

That was it. We all lost it. Except, of course, for poor old Lloyd, who sat in his chair with his arms crossed looking just as sullen as ever.

But then my eyes fell upon Galen again and the laughter in my throat died. My thoughts turned to what I’d seen him do to his wife in front of his own son. A cold hatred consumed me. My stomach was queasy; my pulse was jack-hammering. It was like I’d been dropped into the Antarctic Ocean.

Then something — what the fuck... what the hell is
this
shit???

A weird, creepy feeling came over me as I sat there with my icy stare, trying to drill a hole into the back of Galen’s head. Something which I can only call instinct was telling me there was someone not just watching me, but scanning me: reading my thoughts as I had done to so many countless others.

My head jerked up and my eyes sought out the perpetrator almost instantly. Over to my left, standing next to the bar, was a cocktail waitress. She was clenching a small circular tray of drinks in front of her. Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes were wide with fright and anxiety. She’d seen all the things going on inside my head. She knew I was planning to kill the big guy sitting a few tables over from mine.

We made eye contact for perhaps a full second before she broke and headed towards another table with the drinks. Her long, full-bodied hair swayed behind her as she fast-walked to her destination. Her hair was a rich, dark, almost maroon shade of red. As she delivered her drinks and collected the money from the two middle-aged men, I hit her with the most forceful scan I could muster. I had to find out what exactly she’d seen and what she planned to do about it.

She felt it too. She snapped her head around and scowled at me, then sent something back that I can only describe as the mental equivalent of a hard punch in the nose. I actually felt physical pain, though tolerable and fugacious, for a moment. It was like something in my sinus cavity, behind my nose and eyes, had popped and was sending out these shrill sound waves that echoed inside my skull, making it vibrate like a tuning fork.

I had closed my eyes from the pain, and when I opened them I caught just a glimpse of her red hair as a pair of thin, plastic swinging doors swung shut behind her. Apparently, she’d found an escape route to the kitchen after delivering that telepathic wallop.

Bo was snapping his fingers at my face, “Jess, Jeshua, hey man, you’re sposta’ be starin’ at the strippers, not the waitresses. Strippers are the one with no clothes on.”

*          *          *

Before we go any further, let me explain something else about psychic phenomena. Let me throw out another theory I’ve got. I believe humanity’s psychic talent is something that has naturally occurred through the slow course of evolution. Many would be surprised to discover that about twenty percent of the people I have met in my lifetime display some level of psychic ability. Albeit most of them are in the ultra minor league, meaning they probably aren’t even aware of their own capabilities. If you’ve ever felt someone was watching you and then turn around to discover there is indeed someone staring at you, then you’re probably in this category.

I believe there is some as of yet unexplored part of the brain that can act much in the same way as a television or radio does. And that possibly another part of the mind acts like a broadcast tower. Imagine that every human brain has the capacity of becoming a two-way radio that can both send and receive signals.

The two reasons the entire world is not made up of mind-readers are simple: 1) These “radios” in our heads have no dial; there’s no way to change the channel and, 2) Of those precious few who are born tuned to the right frequency, far far fewer have the ability to turn up the volume.

That twenty percent I mentioned earlier. . . Most of them are almost tuned to the right frequency, but get a shitload of static combined with jumbled information that’s hard to decipher. And the people with the volume problem will only be able to hear the thoughts of others when they are concentrating fiercely.

Sometimes I wonder if some of those poor souls with their volumes cranked up full blast aren’t the ones yelling incoherently in all the insane asylums of the world. You know, the disturbed unfortunates who keep complaining about all
voices
in their heads.

I went through this spiel to make a point. Until I met that redhead, I’d never known
anyone
with enough psychic talent to rival my own. Hell, her ability might even surpass my own. I’d never been able to deliver a psychokinetic punch like she did—but then, I’d never actually tried. I didn’t know something like that was even possible.

For the following week, I thought little of Galen, but quite a bit of that redhead. My theatre troupe at college was entering the dress rehearsal phase of our production.

Construction of the set was finally complete and I was surprised at how professional everything looked. The concept was to make the stage look like one large section of the Berlin Wall, giving it a chiseled, chipped-away appearance. The result was a concrete gray floor with several levels—levels of various, almost random lengths, heights and locations.

Most of the night went by slowly. It was a tech rehearsal, which meant for hours we mostly stood still in full costume and make-up while the backstage techs tinkered around in the sound booth upstairs. Our director decided which shades of lighting she liked for which scenes and decided what music or sound effects should be played for the pivotal, plot-filled moments.

Every cast member’s costume was the same: black turtleneck long sleeve shirts, black cargo pants, black belt, black boots. Am I painting a picture here? Finish off that costume with a long, red sash which was supposed to hang on your neck with both ends hanging evenly just past your waist.

The technical director had finally fixed the dry ice machine which hadn’t been used by the department in years, and soon the entire stage floor was blanketed by a thick, white fog. A thin, diluted amount of it rose upwards like a fine mist, consuming the air like cigarette smoke.

“Okay, last scene, people,” our director announced from about the tenth row back in the auditorium, “Aaaaand, go. . .”

The last scene was, of course, the climax of the play and the blocking (actors’ stage movements) was incredibly complex. Near the end, it was like a pro-wrestling battle royale. Everyone’s shouting, fighting and trying to remember where they have to be when it all ends.

I was having a fuckin’ blast. I was a man dressed all in black, whooping ass on a stage covered by two feet of solid fog. It was like starring in some kind of surreal, futuristic action flick.

I had Lloyd in a headlock and was pretending to deliver a series of rapid-fire blows to the face when I just happened to glance up. I saw another cast member I didn’t recognize, which struck me as significantly odd since I had been working with the same twelve people every day for four weeks.

He was down near the right front corner of the stage, watching everything with mild amusement. He was wearing a matching costume, complete with red sash; but all the actors were supposed to be in the midst of this choreographed brawl.

Then I realized, as my heart stopped beating momentarily, that I
did
recognize this visitor. He had the same long brown hair that ended at the collarbone. The same hook nose. The irises of his eyes were either black or such a dark shade of brown that they might as well have been. He appeared to be somewhere in his late twenties.

It was the same phantom stranger I’d seen just shortly after I’d put two bullets into my adoptive father, possibly the same one Kimber had seen on her side of the vision.

His shadowy countenance looked menacing in the pale, dim lighting our director had chosen for this scene. The way the fog rolling across the floor cut him off at the shins, and the way the thinner fog obscured his features burned into my mind forever an image of the way a truly powerful villain should look.