Jane Be Jane <pt2>......AerisVampire

2. The Price Of A Miracle

A year passed by, and Jane grew to trust her infantile prejudices about the world around her. By two she was able to clearly express each opinion about it, favorable or otherwise. But more quickly than speech developed a Sight. Her third eye.

One morning in July, the three year old Jane sat at the breakfast table with her mother and grandmother, and a bowl of hot cereal. She took a thoughtful bite, and held the spoon in her hand, resting on the table. Still thinking hard on trivial things, Jane swallowed her cereal, and was about to dip in for another bite, when suddenly the metal utensil twisted and turned from the base of the scoop. Limp, it fell when all eyes were on it. Edina's mouth jiggled open and closed like a fish out of water, her eyes wide like blue moons. Jane's grandmother had a face with no expression but a knowing one. The little girl let go of the spoon, and it clinked on the wood of the table like the sword dropped by a defeated soldier. She gave a while and pushed back her chair to allow her quick self-dismissal from the table.

"I told you she was special, Edina," the old woman said. "I told you she would be different. Your husband would not listen. He wouldn't believe it."

Edina stared at the spoon, almost speechless for a moment before she found the words. "But there hasn't been anyone like this in Lomea for-'"

"Fifty years," Jane's grandmother said, recollecting the past as if it had been a dream, her eyes squinted, mouth in a tight and concentrating line. "And to think my father did everything in his power to rid the Arkham family psychics when I was born, and now little Jane. Boris won't stand for this, Edina. We have to do something."

"Right," Edina sniffled, rising from her chair. "I'll go check on Jane, and talk to her about it."

The tiny girl was huddled against the headboard of her bed, her knees hiding her forehead, and arms wrapped around her legs. Through bones and skin and a cotton dress, Edina could tell the child was crying. She lifted Jane's head from the human egg, and looked her in the eyes. Puffy with tears, but ever green, she looked as she did on the day of her birth. But Edina saw something deeper than just a colored iris looking back at her.

"Honey, why are you crying?" she asked, sitting on the bed beside her.

"I had a thought," Jane whimpered, uncurling. She took hold of her mother's pleated skirt, and Edina took her into her arms. Burying her face in Edina's shoulder, Jane continued. "I had a thought that you and Boris were going to die. Someone is going to kill you at night when you're asleep."

"Ohh, honey," Edina swooned, petting her head as she had done on her first day of life. "We're not going to die. No one is going to die."

"But my thought," Jane protested, looking up at her mother for comfort. "It was real."

Jane's grandmother stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, her arms crossed. So the girl is having premonitions already, she thought. More advanced than I'd have ever suspected, she is.

"These thoughts," the old woman began, "will continue to come, and they will all seem real. Some will turn out to be really real, and some won't." Jane coughed through her tears, and listened to her grandmother's words. "That bent spoon was no accident, Jane. You're special. Very special. And that's something Boris won't approve of."

Edina, too, began to cry. She wished she never married Boris in the first place. He was a terrible man, she concluded, and she wouldn't mind if Jane was half right, and he was 'unfortunately' killed in the night. She held Jane tight and blinked back tears.

"Jane, you won't be able to stay here," her grandmother said. "You know that, don't you?"

"Because Boris hates me."

"He's your father, Jane," Edina said softly. She wasn't too concerned, but if she hadn't said it, she would have felt as if she was ignoring something crucial. "Don't call him Boris. And he doesn't hate you, honey."

Yes, he does, Jane wanted to say. She snivelled, rubbing her eyes with a fist. A memory of her infancy suddenly returned.

"We're going to need to send you away," her grandmother explained, ignoring affectionate matters dealing with her son. "Because its not safe to leave until October, you'll have to keep your...your..." she searched for the word, her hand rotating in the air as if sifting for the right thing to say. "Your gift! You'll have to keep your gift to yourself. Control it. No spoon bending. No crying about strange thoughts. Be the little girl he knows and lives with."

"Jane be Jane," she told herself, the bizzare memory becoming increasingly clear. She looked at Edina, who simply stared at her, startled that she remembered.

"No, honey," said Edina. "Jane don't be Jane."

"If Jane be Jane, Jane be hurt." her grandmother said darkly. "Being Jane means utilizing your gift, dear. That is the one thing you may not do with your father around."

She did not move, did not speak, did not understand. What was the problem with a gift? It wasn't really hurting anybody... But it was scary. Those thoughts...

"What don't you understand, Jane?" her grandmother asked, reading her mind. "Those thoughts aren't meant to hurt you, but to prepare you for what might happen. And the reason he won't like it is because he's afraid of it. Since my great-great-grandmother Alanna's time, the Arkham family has experienced a number of psychic and telekinetic children, mostly girls. None since she have developed their powers as quickly as you have."

Thoughts raced through her head; why me?, how did this happen?, what's the problem with psychics?, why me?, who did this?, why me?, why me? She sighed and nodded to herself, finally grasping a strand of the rope her grandmother had thrown.

"So because of some creepy old lady I never knew, I have to leave my home," she resolved.

"You don't have to leave just yet," Edina said, looking Jane's grandmother in the eye. "Hopefully not at all." She rocked Jane, holding her tight, assuring herself that this would be the case. "Behave, honey. Don't let him know you've got this gift."

Jane's grandmother heaved a small sigh and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Jane and her mother alone. They embraced, and they cried. Jane explained her premonition, her 'thought' as she called it, in full color. Edina listened to her daughter's experience with half-interest, and whole hope that this was to be a false alarm. Only time would tell.

And tell, it did.

Blood stained the walls of Boris and Edina's bedroom when young Jane opened the door that dark October morning. The one thing she had been dreading had happened.

There was no telling what had killed them. Their bodies were too mangled to distingush even their identities. But Jane knew her parents when she saw them, even through the blood and organs that decorated the room next to her own. Why hadn't she heard them scream? Did they scream?

For a moment, the six-year-old stood in the sanguine pool beneath her feet, left speechless by such a display of brutality. She was now an orphan. A psychic orphan. Jane felt warm tears form in her eyes. No one would want to care for her.

Outside her parents' room, she stood stilent, sniffling. And then in a flash of darkness and fog, she saw in her m ind a pair of glowing orange eyes. They glared unblinking, stared into her soul. These piercing eyes were not a hallucination. Someone was watching her. Someone. Somewhere. She knew it. But who? Where? She occupied her mind with this as she walked slowly to her grandmother's cottage at the top of the hill.

Thank you so much! AerisVampire

Show all stories by   Author:  56410 ( Click here )