The Touch

Chapter 3 - The Touch

I could never understand why I could not go to school or had to wear gloves most of the time. Or why my father who was once a brilliant scientist (so I was told) had left the city to live in the country as a farmer.

I was desperate for a friend to play with on the farm and got frustrated when my parents never gave me any explanation as to why I couldn't have a friend. My grandmother was my only confidant and I cried on her shoulder many times about how I wanted to be a normal girl with normal friends.

"Hush now my girl" she whispered to me. "You will never be a normal girl as you are a special girl with a very special gift that needs to be hidden. If someone saw your gift then they would take you away from us forever so we must keep you hidden away until the world changes".

"But I don't think I am special at all. How can you be sure I am special when I don't feel it"?

My Grandmother looked gently at me and took the glove off my left hand.

"Lacey, I am going to show just how special you are and I need you to look in the mirror behind me when you do it. But you must promise me you will stop when you see us sitting here like this. Promise me that you will never go further than where we are right now"

I nodded. Not really understanding at the time what she meant, but obeying because I wanted to see what my gift was.

"Now place your fingers on my wrist and remember to release them when you see us sitting here".

I looked into her warm blue eyes and then looked at the mirror behind her. The minute I placed my fingers on her wrist my eyes lit up a brilliant white colour in the mirror. The room then moved into a warped blur and I could see a vision of a little girl in a beautiful pink dress and it was unlike anything I had ever seen a child wear as it had bows and lace and was very delicate. The vision then changed to a few years later to a fifth birthday party and I recognised from my grandmothers photos that my great grandmother was standing behind the girl. "Smile for the camera baby girl" she said.

The vision changed again to the girl being about ten years old and she was looking down at a calf that was lying in a pool of blood. She bent down and touched its head and the blood was pouring out from a tiny hole. The girl started crying and a man yelled "get out of here!"

Next the vision showed when the girl was about 16 years old and she was kissing a boy behind the milking shed. "I love you Gwen and I am going to marry you when I am old enough". The girl laughed and they kissed again. When I looked closely I could see that it was my grandmother but much younger. It changed again and this time I saw my grandmother and another man getting married. He was dressed in a Navy uniform and looked very handsome "To the Bride and Groom" everyone shouted.

It blurred again and a letter was in front of my grandmother and she was sobbing "missing at sea" it said. This must have been my grandmother's first husband.

Another marriage and I recognised the man to be the one who had kissed her behind the milk shed. It was my grandfather.

The visions swirled in front of me. There were babies born and working on the farm, then I saw the death of my grandfather who died before I was born. Then a door opening and my mother and father were standing there with suitcases in their hands. My birth came after that and then I was sitting in front of the mirror with my grandmother. I released my hand quickly and felt exhausted.

 "Here, come and sit beside me and take a breath. That is a lot to see for your first time I suppose".

I couldn't say anything. I just sat there with my heart galloping away in my chest. I could hear my breathing and tried to slow it down a little. Grandmother handed me a glass of iced water and I sipped it slowly.

"Do I have the Touch? Will it go away?" I said.

"Yes you have the Touch and no, it won't leave you. In fact yours is stronger than any I have heard about. The Touch enables you to see into the past and into the future and some were also able to see right up to the person's death. I also know that you have the ability to blank someone's memories and they can be stunned for a small amount of time. You have done this on your mother and your father a couple of times by accident" she laughed.

"Is that why mother and father say that I can't go to school or have friends?"

"Yes, if you are discovered then you would be taken away from us forever. We must keep you safe until we can work out what we can do to keep your secret hidden when you do meet people. It has not been done before, but there may be a way that you can control this gift and keep it hidden from others. Only time and practise will tell though".

I placed the glove back on my hand and hugged her close to me.

For the next ten years we managed to remain hidden and safe on the farm. We could live off everything we produced on the land and my Grandmother's house was very isolated and hidden from roads. We remained happy being together and each night we practised a little more with my gift. My grandmother thought that one way to conceal who I actually was would be to try and control the light from my eyes. I would practice over and over again trying to stop it from happening, but it never did. I would get angry and refuse to do it for a month, then would come back to it and try it again.

I would like to say that the day it did stop was from my own doing but it wasn't. The day the light in my eyes stopped was the day my whole family was killed and I escaped. I was sixteen years old.

My parents and grandmother had instructed me as to what needed to happen if we were found. There was a trap door in the cellar that led to a tunnel. The tunnel would come out in the fields and I was to run through the fields to an old abandoned factory. In this factory there was an old warehouse garage which held a car packed with all the supplies and money I would need. We had run through this several times and my parents had taught me how to drive since I was eleven. They had even made sure I had an apartment to go to, enough money to last the rest of my life and a new identity. But all their preparation would never make up for the fact that when the Watchers stormed through the door on that fateful day and I had to run to the cellar that I could hear gun shots upstairs and screaming. It took all my strength not to turn back and run upstairs to them, but I had been told never to come back if the Watchers came as what they would do to me would be beyond terrible.

So I ran through the corn fields in the pitch black night with echoes of my family screaming and tears running down my face to a warehouse that would hold the key to my future. I would now become someone with a new identity who had moved to a new town with a story that did not belong to me. Little did I know that running through those fields would actually lead me to something that I never thought I had before, a purpose.