Spirit Wars (8 page)

More
than a few times, I prevented the supervisors from making the grave mistake of
sending a child to a molester or an abusive family; something that would’ve
sent them to court and shut down the entire orphanage. And in their heart of
hearts they were grateful, not to mention the imperiled orphans.

But,
like I said, I was sometimes forced to turn a blind eye. There would be
outcomes I couldn’t predict and things well beyond a teenager’s control. Those
always filled me with remorse and I’d be disconsolate for days.  The
Sisters would know exactly what the problem was but speak nothing of it. Only
when my talents were really needed, like when they were thinking of hiring a
new help or investigating a case of theft, would I be sent for. Most of the
time the nuns sympathized without encouraging.

People
called me the Spirit Sherlock with both approval and disapproval, but of all
those people, no one ever suggested the need for moderation until the name
began to weigh upon my small shoulders.

At
first, it was all a game or a hero’s blustering on TV. But while I could relate
with the main character from a safe distance and experience the world without
its actual consequences, I soon found myself the star of my own life and the
stakes piled up too high for me to glimpse any hope of release.

Day
by day my abilities grew. Being one of a kind, I felt as though I was cast down
a dried-up well where I was to spend the rest of my life in solitary
confinement. Looking back, I can’t help but marvel at myself for surviving the
isolation with a maturity and courage far beyond my years. On the other hand,
it also feels as though most of my childhood had passed by while I was in some
sort of trance.

On my
own, I
learned how to control my talents and to avoid exerting myself. I became wary
of very old items that had passed through too many hands as these could be
damaging to both body and mind. During the couple of times I had to learn the
hard way, I was invariably left drained.

I
also learned to keep away from objects that belonged to those who had already
crossed over. In the same way I chose to keep silent about the balloons and
their fatal implication, I knew there were things man wasn’t ready to know.

Because
of my extreme unconventionality, the supervisors at Blessed Children’s
despaired of ever finding a family to take me in.

But
then the day came. A man came.

This
was to be the last reading I ever did. The last case of the Spirit Sherlock
that would end in my taking off the mantle to the dismay of all my fans.

The visitor was a man in a luxurious black trench coat and fedora
whose brim he kept low over his eyes. He didn’t let the Sisters or any of the
kids take his coat, which conveyed his intention of being there only for a
quick visit, nothing unheard of in the orphanage. But his eccentric fashion
sense, the combination of the hat, coat, and leather driving gloves inside the
poorly-ventilated house in a tropical country, produced a sinister air around
him. All the kids thought he was either a spy or a gangster.

I
t was just my luck when the man expressed interest in me – me of
all people, who was notorious for my weirdness and frequent misbehavior and
unpopularly old at the age of fourteen – me in particular and no other. As
though the man knew something about me that nobody else did; perhaps he had had
his eyes set on me for a while or it wasn’t the first time we had met.

Indeed a great tingle of precognition rushed through my brain the
first time I locked eyes with him from under his hat’s brim. I thought I caught
the glint of a monocle though I couldn’t begin to comprehend why anyone would
be wearing one outside of the silver screen. It was like the crack of a door to
a mystery. The question was, did I want to know what was behind the door? It
could be a way out of the orphanage or, more likely, a chute into the waiting
mouth of a lion.  

The visitor asked to have a private chat with me in the Mother
Superior’s office like a handful of interested adopters. The Sisters, normally
suspicious of such characters who appeared wifeless, consented. After all, what
harm would thirty minutes of talk do? If this was a chance to send me out of
the orphanage for good, then it was a risk everyone was willing to take. It was
a good deal.

If they only knew what could happen in thirty minutes.

We didn’t stay in the office long. The visitor only waited for us
to be alone but as soon as the door clicked shut behind him, he walked towards
the window, lifted it open, and stepped right out onto the sill as nimbly as
the world’s biggest and oldest kid. He smiled a youthful, naughty and mute
smile under the constant brim and motioned with his index finger for me to
follow.

For a fleeting moment, with the tail of his black coat dragging
under between his bent knees, he looked crow-like. He disappeared over the
window in the blink of an eye, his hanging coat-tail the last and only evidence
of his passing, and soon this too was gone.

I
was left gaping and had a few slowed moments to decide what to
do. Should I accept this challenge or go back outside and tell the Sisters? It
was after all suspicious of a prospective father to be climbing windows and
daring the child. But something in what was happening mesmerized me. Hadn’t I
wished something unusual would happen? For countless lonesome nights, hadn’t I
prayed for a shocking event to pull me out of the bleakness of orphanage life,
save me from an existence devoid of purpose? Now that the day had finally come,
I wasn’t ready and my knees were all wobbly.

When I finally gathered the courage to bring myself out the
window, I found the man standing on the edge of the roof and waiting for me. I
swear to God, his eyes were as luminous as a cat’s in the dark – or those of
the monster that haunted my room – and just as I guessed, one of them was
artificial and would glint like glass.

“You dream of becoming a spy,” the man stated rather than queried.
“I’ve been watching you, Master Lachesis. This is what your heart has always
wanted. Well, today is your lucky day because I’m here to welcome you to a
grand conspiracy.”
 
His voice
was the deep rumble of thunder bastardized into the oily cadence of a street
hustler.

T
he whole thing was starting to feel like that scene in the Bible,
the temptation in the desert, one of those stories the Sisters were fond of
telling. The only difference was, the devil was the best a kid’s imagination
could cook up, half-gangster and half-spy from an overload of pulp-fiction
Hollywood flicks, whereas the Son of God was too young to make a responsible
decision.

What did he mean he had been watching me? With that glowing cat’s
eye and bizarre scope that could probe past flesh and bone, straight into my
soul? And why did he call me by a different name?

All these things were flashing through my head like tunnel lights
through the windows of a train, but they were all swept away and hushed into
utter calmness by the thought of the drop below I had always gazed at but never
really feared. A four-story fall, not enough to kill a grown man but for a kid
thrown down by an adult male, it’d break more than a limb; probably even a
neck.

I
actually
squinted to get a clearer image of my strange father-candidate. It was
impossible to tell the man’s age from his smooth face and his erratic movements
that seemed to ceaselessly warp reality into a blur; in the end one was left
with nothing but a vague impression. And it was as though his words were
honeyed crystalline water from a magical fountain that erased every memory. He
was the most intriguing man I had ever met and yet at the same time the most
unremarkable. I doubted if any of the adults in the orphanage would manage to
recall what the man was like – or that there was ever a man.

Over
the following years I would harbor a dim but nagging suspicion that if anyone
checked the guest register for that day, they would find nothing but faded ink
on a line. The man was like a mystical court jester who, through his jerky
motions, cartwheels and somersaults, had everyone eating out of his hand. Every
single person in the orphanage couldn’t for a moment look away and risk missing
his illusions.

Without
a doubt, he was a being from another dimension.

I
was totally clueless as to his origin and intentions. A first for the Spirit
Sherlock. I was frozen like a buck whose antlers had felled many a rival but
who was now standing face to face with a carnivore for the first time, and the
lord of all carnivores at that, a stately black panther that locked his hungry
gaze at me.

Still
standing on the edge and a harmless distance from me, the man removed one of
his gloves as though he intended to close a deal. Still he kept most of his
face covered with the brim of his hat. Then the curve of a smile glued to
either corner of his lips, he whispered across the space between us: “You long
for answers, Master Lachesis. I have all the answers you seek.”

He
threw the glove down onto the roof tiles between us and there it lay with its
sleek blackness bunched up and stiff like a sleeping tarantula.

“Go
ahead. Touch it and free yourself.”

A
small warning in my head told me I was playing with forces people weren’t meant
to meddle with, much less fourteen-year old kids. If I wasn’t careful, my
curiosity would destroy me. And yet an even louder voice rebelled against my
indecision, against my very existence. My soul cried out for an explanation as
to why my parents didn’t want me. And my visitor made it sound like there was
an answer to every question, like it was all within my grasp, just waiting for
me to make up my own damn mind.

I
gingerly lowered my body into a crouch and my hand trembled a little as I
reached.

My
fingertips grazed the black leather. It was enough.

This
was the reading I had: At some unknown point in the future, the whole sky would
be covered by a flock of bat-like creatures as far as the eye could see. They
would form an endless, waving parade of dark flags as if to call forth armies
against a weakened ruler. This deluge swept and flowed ceaselessly with an
ultrasonic entomo-mechanical roar and in its heart, a flame-wrapped titan, the
culmination of all nightmares, laid waste to human cities. It was an infernal
sight and sound. All sources of light were missing in the heavens and the days
of darkness stretched on to eternity.

The
weakened lord was being swallowed by the wave of bats and he was crying out in
an alien yet universal plea for help. Within earshot a figure, shadowy and
contorted, turned its back on him. A sinking feeling told me I knew exactly who
the figure was: It was me.

Most
psychic experiences I had ever had gave me reason to regret, whether it was a
head-splitting migraine that reached all the way to the back of my skull or a
fever that would go on for days. Yet at that time, although I was in shock,
everything felt as smooth as silk; it was only later in my life that I would
come to associate the episode with a very high-quality drug or wine after one
had been used to the more common variety. It was like what the wine snobs said:
liquid gold.

“What
did you see?” The trickster asked, his lips curling and for a second I almost
expected a forked tongue to flick right between them.

“I…
uh…” I stammered.  

“Cat
got your tongue?” He teased and laughed musical peals that overlapped and
blended. The sound was a cross between glasses clinking and a cave filled with
bats.

“We
are now and eternally brothers-in-arms, Master Lachesis. What you have glimpsed
is the time in the future when your services must be rendered. You shall become
a double agent, a devious master of the double cross.

“There’s
a war brewing between world and underworld. Think of this as an invitation to a
private bunker. For such a privilege, any mortal would gladly give their right
arm… or rip another’s.”

Then,
from an inside pocket of his coat the man took out a small crystal ball like
those marbles that were the latest craze on the playground.  

“However,
before the proper time, all your senses must mimic the slumber of the dead. You
shall become blind and numb to our world, and your own memory shall cease to be
of aid to you. Then, like all expired lives, you will be reawakened and
reminded of the tribute you must make.

“You
will know when you are needed, Master Lachesis.”

I
was glued
to the spot and my eyes nailed to the tiny ball of a universe the man held
between his thumb and index finger, deeply bothered about its fate. Or as it
was for a soldier who was hypnotized by the release of a grenade pin, the
realization would come too late.

The
man smashed the tiny ball onto the roof. It scrunched against a tile and just
as it did, its owner tumbled backwards like a black-clad assassin making an
exit. I caught one last glimpse of him flying away as his coat vent ripped all
the way up to become the wings of an enormous crow. 

Then
the
whole
world was bathed in blinding, electrifying light.

This
flash of light raised all the hair on my body. It was the kind of energy psychic
individuals could sense but was otherwise invisible and harmless to regular
people. This went on for many seconds while I felt my eyes being scorched and
melted from the inside and I craved to gouge them out. I was driven to my knees
by the pain.

I must’ve
passed out because
when I came to I was lying flat on my back on the yard
below. I wondered what I was doing there. Did I finally act on the suicidal
thoughts that had been preying on my mind for the longest time?  Until
that very moment I never thought I was the type.