The Clairvoyant

Chapter Eight: Bits and Pieces

  The good thing about cats was that you could leave them for a whole week with sufficient food and water, and they couldn't care less about anything else. Yes, they could get huffy when you got home about their week's worth of shit in their litter box, but besides that... they were fine.

  Sekhmet, however, would not stay in Mary's apartment alone. And luckily, Thomas, who was a bit shocked by the request, had agreed to let the cat come. He just couldn't understand why Mary felt she needed her cat. When he asked she simply claimed Sekhmet was a good luck charm.

   Mary fixed a large barred travel cage up for her cat. It had a litter box and a bed - food and water would be offered when they stopped somewhere.

    Thomas and Mary worked out a pattern. Since she was a night owl, she'd drive at night, and as he was a morning person, Thomas would take over during the day.

   Mary was perfectly happy with this arrangement. She was at ease, and felt amicable around Thomas. That is, up until an hout before they left. Then she began to get bits and pieces of visions.

    Nothing was from the future. The snatches were all from the past, and they were alarming.

    He was hiding something of immense importance. Something that would endanger their current form of friendship. Not that they were friends... a haunted house was the only reason they had been brought together after all. But if Thomas was hiding something big enough to cause complications between them, then would that not endanger Mary? She felt the strong emotions he felt, dramatized by her cruxes of course, but what he was feeling he felt in mass quantities. It was bad. Something he felt was awful.

   Mary wondered if it were a crime. Was she endangered?

   She sat on her floor, holding Sekhmet, waiting up until the very last minute.

    He was a priest, what could he possibly do that wouldn't strip him of his position? But then cops were cops and sometimes they never got caught for their felonies. As did doctors. Lawyers. Teachers.

    She saw his truck pull up outside.

    Mary closed her eyes trying to decipher anything she could about the man in the white collar coming up to her door.

   She could only distinguish what she had always been able to distinguish. His heart was kind. His mind was severely troubled.

    Mary opened her front door before he knocked.

   "You're now forty-five minutes early."

   "Hello Mary. I know, and I do apologize, buy I wanted to see if you needed any help," he smiled at her.

   Had she overlooked his charming smile so easily?

    She expressed her happiness back.

   "I'm ready to go actually." She put Sekhmet in her travel cage.

   "Could you just help me with this?"

   "Certainly, Mary."

   They each took a side of the large cage and lifted. Sekhmet started spitting and hissing inside.

  Thomas's warm eyes widened.

   "She's angry, isn't she?"

   "Yes."

   They loaded her into the cab.

   "Oh Sekhmet, stop it," Mary hissed back at her.

   "Sekhmet? That's an interesting name. Does it mean anything?"

   His arm brushed hers as he closed the door and Mary staggered.

   She suddenly saw a younger Thomas, a teenager. He was horrified and furious at a woman. His finger nails were digging into his skin, drawing blood, but he didn't feel it.

   Mary came back.

   Thomas was staring at her.

   "Er... uh... Sekhmet was the egyptian Goddess of big cats. Lions... um... but make sure you don't confuse her with Bastet. She's the Goddess of all cats."

   "You are so interesting," Thomas said, amused. "I guess you have a head for facts."

   And you have a head for lies. "Yes, I guess I do." Mary went back inside for her suitcase.

   Thomas leaned against his truck and waited. He really liked Mary. She was such a character. One minute she was solemn, yhe next she was conniving. He could not figure her out.

   Not being able to figure her out was part of the mystery and the fun.

    Mary reappeared with multiple suitcases full of books and what not. She couldn't see what they'd need, so she thought the basics might help.

   They loaded her luggage in and were soon on their way to the county limits, Mary remaining silent, Thomas babbling.

              
   Mary barely survived the first year in her prison. She saw an eighth of the kids die within that year. She felt four new spirits birthed from the grave. Pain became her friend. She learned what true fear was.

   But what was worse than all of this, was feeling what everyone around her felt. The despair of the other children - a few of which were of age but kept in the institute anyway - she felt the nervousness some of the doctors and nurses felt, the unease when they were around the kids that did have peculiarities, the guilt that a couple kind souls on the staff felt every time they had to issue treatments or overdose the children they were supposed to be helping. The only feeling she relished was the discomfort she elicited from Dr. Ellechien. Yes, the doctor hated her. Yes, she often recieved severe punishments from her when she told her of her insecurities, her past, the secrets she wanted to take to the grave... but the consequences were worth Mary's while. If she could scare Dr. Ellechien, nothing else mattered.

  In some ways, Mary, herself learned of and became evil. This would later harm her in life, giving herself to the darkness, but she enjoyed her harm now. She needed  it. She needed to have some control, if she had nothing else, no other pleasure. It might have been sadistic and cruel, and it might have made her no better than the torturers of the prison of the patients' minds, but it was still, and always would be, fun for Mary.

    She was getting revenge.

  Sorry it is so short... but a note on Dr. Ellechien. In French, Elle means she. Chien means dog. She dog. Female. Dog. Loosely translated... bitch. Dr. Bitch. And let's face it, Ellechien is twisted. But more about her later. Thank you so much for reading, and this chapter is dedicated to

@Socasm

And

  @clickycricket