HIDDEN VISION
EARL BLESSING
1
Halloween.
What some refer to as All Hollow’s Eve; some fruit-bowls even call it Devil’s Night. A very busy night. Full of fun and frivolity. It’s always a night for cops. Calls mostly for pranks, ones that ordinarily couldn’t hurt anybody—unless you count the shit under someone’s shoe, from trying to put out a sack of it lit on fire and left on someone’s doorstep. Eggs, on the other hand, thrown at cars, that could cause an accident from people trying to use their wipers, and only smearing the crap all across their windshield—it’s a reflexive action, and people don’t really think about the consequences until it’s too late. And that’s how some of the pranks go sometimes. No one expects anyone to get hurt—maybe just annoyed—but no one expects that to be dire results. Consequences. They are so often overlooked. As a cop you learn to expect the unexpected, not to flinch at the unusual, and never assume the worse. Always wait for the facts. They determine the truth of the situation. And its severity.
Sometimes.
Rape? Murder? Not as common as most people might think. Most people are just trying to have a good time on Halloween. Homicide doesn’t usually enter into the equation. But sometimes things have a tendency to get out of hand—especially when booze or drugs are added to the equation.
Sometimes.
In my field of work I see a lot. And it is not always conditioned to my scope of practice. Furthermore, it is not always what most people see. Not cops. Not detectives. Not pathologists. Not psychiatrists. Not psychics. I still remember my wife’s words before they clouded over with dementia: “Go now. Save me. Let me remember you as I do now, before I forget. Forget me not…” I heard the words ten years before my wife would speak them…on a cell-phone, in my mind’s eye… in a dream I would hear them the same way when she called me from the hospital ten years later…on a cell-phone. I had forgotten the dream. After all ten years can seem like a long time.
This is not the case however when you love someone. Then time can never be enough. Moments that there are no words for, become far and few between during life’s hectic schedules, and cherished when made available. And sometimes my eyes fog over with tears when I hear the song, Time in a Bottle.
Sometimes.
It hadn’t been long enough for me and Jeanie. She wasn’t my childhood sweetheart. But she may as well have been. And the time we had together ended too quickly. But then who expects their spouse to suffer from dementia? The result of a malignant tumor in the cerebral cortex. It started with headaches—migraines, then Jeanie complained about vision impairment; memory loss was added to the list, along with a personality disorder. I had a condition, Jeanie had a condition. The only difference was that I could live with mine. While her condition robbed her of her identity. She lives in the Stateview Hospital now, the care she gets is exemplary; at least until the tumor kills her. The doctors give her less than six months. And in spite of her words, I would still visit—try to manifest a memory that she could hold onto, that she could cherish. But in the end she would forget about me completely. Sometimes life can be so harsh and cruel to a couple just trying to find their way in life; it can be harsh and cruel to a man who believes he is doing the right thing.
Sometimes.
I joined the force when I was twenty-seven. I married Jeanie when I was twenty-three. I received my promotion and title as—Treat Finnegan Biddeford-Sanford PD—Detective of Homicide at age thirty-two; one year before Jeanie would start experiencing dementia. It’s funny the way things work out sometimes; you get a promotion, your wife gets dementia. Your life improves on one level, and on another it sticks it in and breaks it off. Go figure. And you, being the detective that you are, have to look at things objectively—don’t allow yourself to be overpowered with involvement. A little hard to do when your beloved is involved.
At seventeen I had a dream that my miniature collie was hit by a truck trying to cross the road to me. He had gotten out through a hole in the fence, and decided to wander around a bit. A thoroughfare ran through my neighborhood. And when my dog’s eyes met mine, which was obviously cue to come across the street, he did so. When in reality my eyes screamed for him to stay. He didn’t. Lad was hit by the truck, pulled under the front wheels, and spit out the back. The driver didn’t stop. And through a haze of tears, I saw a bloody lump in the road, breathing laboriously.
The dream saved my dog’s life. For had it not been for the precognitive warning, my dog would have crossed the street, just as I had seen in my dream. But the feeling of de’ja’vu was exquisite, and instead of meeting my dog’s eyes, I commanded him to stay!—not to cross the street. And when the road was clear, I crossed it myself and took hold of my dog, bringing him back home safely.
De’ja’vu. It is something that I experience a lot in my line of work. Ever since the day that I prevented my dog from being a lump in the road. For as I said earlier, I have a condition.
It’s not the sort of thing that shows up in medical texts or journals, therefore it cannot be seen—not like the misfiring of neurons that take place in the brain; that can be identified in someone with a mental disorder—my condition cannot be identified, it cannot be quantified, and therefore it doesn’t exist. If I insisted that it did, the psychiatrists would diagnose me with partial schizophrenia. And who has ever heard of a detective with partial schizophrenia or otherwise?
If my condition existed, then according to brilliant minds of quantum mechanics, it would be suggested that I have been known to alter the time continuum, or time-stream, as I prefer, rather than it simply being doo-da coincidence.
No. There is no clinical definition for my condition. Although the esoterics have a word for it—two words actually; they call it: Precognitive Clairvoyance.
A term that the rational mind would balk at. And I wouldn’t blame them. It’s only natural to be skeptical, even cynical, when you hear of a condition that can only be quantified by the understanding of some psychics. If there is no scientific evidence to support the theory, that is what it remains, a theory. And we may not be able to see the wind; however we can still see evidence of it, to know that it is there. The only evidence one can see with my condition is only after the facts. And I have lived with those facts for almost twenty-five years.
Few people know of my condition, and few of them don’t take it to heart; rather they would like to believe that I am an exemplary detective, with amazing hunches at times. One who should always listen to his intuition. My partner, Aubrey knows of my condition, but she isn’t quite sure if she fully believes it or not. She has seen me doing some rather strange stuff, and come up with evidence when others have somehow overlooked it, but she still tries to write it off as intuition. Be that as it may, she hasn’t informed my superiors—nor will she—whether she believes it or not; she still believes that I’m a good detective. And a good man. She has no intention of seeing my career destroyed over something that she cannot disprove.
But detective or no, psychic or no, dreams, or PC, nothing gave me any hint concerning the case that would in time be known as the Healing Church Ministries Massacre. This rather macabre case would test my resolve as a detective, and determine the mettle of PC, even as it would push both past their conventional boundaries.
