Page 51 of Dark Visions

“I was there,” said Kane. “As a kid, I was there. My old man was a contractor on the base.”

“Fucking hell,” whispered Flip. “I was there too. My father was stationed there for two years.”

All eyes turned to Spook. His mouth held in a tight line, his fists clenched at his sides. He was battling something internally but hearing the words from the others had his mind racing.

“I lived there too,” said Aislinn, staring at Spook. “My father worked on a laser-guided system, repairing, not building.” Her eyes continued to stare at Spook, the others holding his gaze as well.

The deafening silence covered the room like a blanket of fog. No one moved, no one took his or her eyes from anyone, just staring ahead. Spook finally blinked and looked at each face, settling back on the sweet face of his friend’s woman.

“I lived there, too.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Well, doesn’t that spin a new light on things,” said Aislinn. “We’re all pretty close to the same age. It would make sense that perhaps we were all exposed to something.”

“Then why aren’t there hundreds of people with gifts?” asked Kane.

“Maybe there are,” she said. “Maybe they don’t know they have it. If someone had my gift, I can tell you that they may be labeled as psychotic, or they could be hiding their gifts. I don’t remember a lot of children near or around the base. In fact, I don’t remember a lot of anything there.”

“I don’t remember much about being there,” said Adam. “I was pretty young. Maybe three or four when we got there and six or seven when I left.”

“Same,” said Kane. “I don’t remember any of you, so maybe we were all there at different times. I do know there weren’t a lot of children. We lived in this dump of an apartment above a garage in Herlong.”

“I remember going to the one little store they had as a child,” said Aislinn. “I was really young. I think my first episode happened about a year after I left.”

“My dad was stationed there for two years,” said Flip. “We lived in a trailer outside the base. My mom home-schooled me. I think my first episode was about a year after we moved to Fort Lewis.”

Adam looked at his friends and shook his head. They were all in the same area, around the same time, on a base that held munitions and potentially weapons that no one was aware existed. Anything could have been in the air or transmitted through the water.

“I was five,” said Spook softly. All eyes turned to him, not saying anything to him. “We – my mom and me – we lived with her boyfriend. He would come home every day with this pink dust all over him. My mom would shake it off on the front porch.”

“Pink dust,” whispered Aislinn. “I remember…”

“He would ruffle my hair and hand me a dollar so I could run to the candy store. I think he did it so he and my mom could get it on, but I didn’t care.” It was as if Spook were speaking to himself. He stared over the heads of his friends out the window into the gray day.

“Cell phones were just starting to get popular, but we had this house phone that when it rang, I knew who it was without answering. It would freak my mom out. I would say ‘grandma’s calling.’ Her boyfriend had a beeper or pager or whatever, and I would know when he was within a few miles of the house.”

“I don’t understand,” said Adam.

“He sees the signals. He feels them,” said Aislinn, staring at Spook. He gave her a slight nod.

“I do. I feel the signals, but more than that, I see the numbers associated with them.”

“You mean like all the ones and zeros?” asked Flip.

“Something like that, but more like… like your digital print. For instance, I know that Adam’s first cell phone number was 555-831-2345.”

“What the fuck!? How did you know that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s like it’s imprinted in your DNA. The man down there, the one with the black umbrella in his hand? His cell phone is 555-275-0892. His last three calls have been from his mother.”

“You see this all the time?” asked Adam.

“All the fucking time,” he said calmly. “In the sandbox, over there, I could hear and see the numbers like a teletype machine racing across my brain. It was so much I could barely cope. When I’m in a city, it’s fucking overwhelming. Thousands of people with thousands of numbers. Over there? I always knew where you guys were by your signals.”

“And you knew where the enemy was?” said Kane. “That’s how you saved our asses in the mountains.”

Spook nodded.

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