Anomaly Page 5

  Alice wouldn’t allow Negative to worm its way into her thoughts. She had to push aside her anger and hatred towards Negative because it didn’t do anything to help; it just allowed the destructive energy to grow. She saw Kyle’s soul dim even more under the Negative atmosphere in the small room and she glanced back at the red-head, to see her soul dimming too. The living were irrational sometimes, they often got upset or angry over the smallest of things, unknowingly feeding this destructive force. Energies didn’t have a consciousness, they didn’t make decisions, they just were. They existed, and they either grew or they were cancelled out, they had no controls or restrictions. Only Positive souls like Alice could help to influence things, but unfortunately not everyone ended up Positive. She felt her soul swell and forced her energy out and away from her; it appeared directly like a fine vapour, where the light from each Positive spark bounced around the tiny, mini droplets and split into thousands of tiny rainbows. She pushed it out with her consciousness towards the Negative void-like cloud, and as soon as it came into contact, the two began to annihilate each other.

  She took another step backwards, her arm brushing against the red-headed girl behind her. The red-head let out a little gasp and jumped, swinging a large brown bag and knocking over a tray full of paper forms onto the floor. Alice cursed in surprise, and turned around instinctively to help her; she knelt on the floor and then paused. She blinked, she couldn’t do anything, she couldn’t help; her imagined, projected body couldn’t alter the physical world. She cursed again as she felt the icy taint of Negative brush over her shoulders, and then she saw a pair of legs and feet disappearing as the front door slammed shut. The Negative source was gone. Alice was about to get up when she felt a familiar, warm presence beside her. Kyle had bent down, his body brushing against hers. He reached out a hand through Alice’s frozen one, and picked up the forms from the floor. Alice stared in bewilderment as she saw Kyle’s arm and hand pass through hers; it was as though she’d been knocked on the head and was suffering from double vision. Little sparks jumped from her skin, invisible to Kyle, but very real to her. She stood up quickly and snatched her arm back, clutching it to her chest in alarm. Her energy had never reacted so violently with Kyle before.

  ‘I swear I didn’t touch it,’ the red-head said in a soft Irish accent, as she scrambled across the floor.

  ‘It’s OK; your bag must have knocked it or something,’ Kyle said, as he piled together some of the forms.

  ‘I didn’t touch it!’ she said, staring him straight in the eye.

  ‘OK. OK.’ Kyle got to his feet, holding his palms up in surrender. He offered her the forms and she snatched them from him quickly.

  ‘Next, please,’ the woman at the counter said, looking at the students with disapproval.

  Alice watched as Kyle stepped up to the counter and handed over a white identification card. The woman scrutinised his card before slapping it down on the counter and hurrying off to the store room. Kyle returned the card to his wallet and the woman appeared moments later with a few letters and a larger padded, red and white envelope. Alice’s eyes were drawn to the padded envelope; the fluttering sensation pounded like a drum inside her. She let her mind stretch out and brush curiously against the package. There was an unusual Positive energy associated with it and it sent bursts of warmth straight into Alice’s soul. The woman thrust Kyle’s post to him aggressively. He thanked her quickly, tucking his post into his rucksack. As he left he glanced at the nervous red-head, who was having difficulty unzipping her bag. Alice kept close, rubbing her arms as her energy continued to spark furiously. The disturbance she had felt was inside the envelope, she was sure of it.

  Eight

  Sophia made her way up a bricked path to the glass front of her modern accommodation block. She had an en-suite room with a double bed in one of the most expensive areas on campus. The carefully manicured lawns and garden areas were a bonus; they even had their own carpark. Most of the students here were wealthy; a lot of them were studying medicine and were in their final years. As a postgraduate student, Sophia had been given the choice between her current accommodation and a house which she would have shared with other postgraduates. However, Sophia liked her space and time alone; she couldn’t always explain the strange occurrences that happened around her so she preferred to be as isolated as possible. It was safer and less hassle.

  She grinned and put her key in the lock to her bedroom; she hadn’t felt this giddy or excited in months. She could feel Positive energy sparking in the air; its warmth swept gently over her coffee-coloured skin, and its peaceful nature overwhelmed her senses. She had been careful so far. She was sure Alice had noticed her but the Deykashee soul hadn’t tried to communicate with her yet. Sophia had kept her distance, and even though she had attended most of the guest presentations, and Kyle had been present at them all, she had avoided eye contact with both him and Alice. Kyle didn’t have a clue; he showed no reaction to Alice whatsoever and Sophia had informed the rest of the family of their current predicament. Visions and dreams containing the pair were slowly inching back into the Leto’s minds but no one could make any sense of them. She stepped into her room and past her little bathroom as she shrugged out of her coat. She pulled the hairband out of her hair and let out a sigh of relief as her dark tresses fell about her shoulders.

  ‘Well, hello Sophia,’ said a jovial voice and then she appeared – the Deykashee soul Mabel, who had frequented Sophia’s room ever since she had arrived. She was the nosey, deceased, grandmother of a girl on the floor above Sophia’s. Mabel floated down through the ceiling and sat on the corner of Sophia’s bed. She had dark grey hair twisted behind her head and she wore a long skirt with a cream top and pretty shawl.

  ‘Mabel,’ Sophia said, folding her arms. Usually she would have frowned at the soul’s sudden intrusion but today she felt nothing but hope, and hope was a powerful thing.

  ‘You seem in good spirits,’ Mabel said staring directly at Sophia’s soul. Mabel was semi-transparent which often happened with Deykashee souls; they didn’t usually hang around for more than a few years because the bond that sustained their existence weakened as the living person moved on with their lives. It’s what made Alice’s soul even more unusual; she had been completely opaque. If the rest of the living world could see her, their eyes wouldn’t have picked up on anything strange. Unfortunately for Sophia, Mabel was only a year old in soul terms and it didn’t look like she would be crossing over any time soon.

  ‘It’s definitely them,’ Sophia said as she moved over to her desk in the corner and began to pull out folders and notebooks.

  ‘Oh?’ Mabel brightened up, her imagined body becoming more solid as her positive energy charged through her system in one burst. Sophia opened a battered old folder and started flipping through its contents.

  ‘It’s confusing though. Alice shouldn’t be here and Kyle… well he’s studying for a business degree, not physics. He’s on the wrong path, but it’s almost as though it’s running twisted and parallel to the original path,’ she said, her fingers paused on one of the pages. On the page was a hand drawn sketch by her own great great grandmother; the faded pencil drawing showed a young man with Kyle’s attributes holding hands with a young woman who looked remarkably like Alice. The sketched version of Alice wore the same knee-length dress with thin straps over the shoulders and her feet were bare. She was slightly behind Kyle as they held hands, frozen as sketches in mid-stride, and in Kyle’s other hand was a small, slim, book. Sophia’s great great grandmother had shaded the book in, and from the Leto’s many visions they knew this book was black with silver markings. Sophia’s eyes sparkled; her ability to see deceased souls was not a common ability and many who claimed to have the same ability were either very good liars or ended up in care. It was another gift, passed down through the generations in her family. Many Letos had proposed that it was something deep within their genetics which made
them more sensitive to certain frequencies, where others were not. Sophia and her family were very careful about the subject and kept their mouths shut; they didn’t want to draw unwanted attention and they didn’t want people to fear them.

  ‘Is that the pair?’ Mabel asked. She had silently moved beside Sophia and was peering down at the folder.

  ‘Yes. My great great grandmother drew this picture years ago and since then every Leto has had dreams and visions where these two appear.’

  ‘Ah, but you could argue that the drawing prompted similar dreams in the younger generations that followed,’ Mabel replied.

  ‘No.’ Sophia shook her head. ‘They tested that theory out with me. They didn’t show me anything until I started seeing things on my own, and even then they left it months before they finally allowed me into their loop of knowledge.’ Sophia frowned as her chest tightened. They had their reasons she told herself. Yet it did little to alleviate her anger when she recalled the days she had spent believing she was losing her mind.

  ‘Clever people.’ Mabel beamed.

  ‘We have scientific brains but open hearts,’ Sophia replied. ‘Every Leto has tried and largely failed to explain our strange abilities through the accepted scientific methods.’

  ‘But why are these two so important?’ Mabel asked as she poked the picture and watched as her finger disappeared through the folder.

  ‘Together they were meant to be the catalyst for change, destined to nudge humanity in a certain direction, to help guide the world,’ Sophia said, undisturbed by Mabel’s ghostly finger. ‘They were… how do I explain?’ A faint smile crossed her face. ‘You know when you see a couple and you just know they were meant to be, without really knowing why you know it.’

  ‘Yes, I guess I do,’ Mabel said.

  ‘That’s what it was like when we had visions of Kyle and Alice; every Leto said exactly the same thing, they were simply meant to be.’

  ‘I don’t see how one couple can be so important,’ Mabel said.

  ‘It’s not just them.’ Sophia sighed as she shut the folder. ‘Whatever they talked about together, whatever they did, wherever they went, whoever they met, whatever ideas and thoughts they were supposed to have together… something, somewhere, was supposed to spark the idea which would then lead to a discovery.’ Sophia placed the folder back on the shelf.

  ‘A discovery?’

  ‘Yes. Kyle, Alice, Cameron and I were supposed to discover a new particle, a particle which behaves like a virtual particle but is not a virtual particle. Its discovery would open up the ideas for the Positive and Negative forces, for the timelines, for the afterlife, for everything.’ Sophia gestured vaguely. ‘Every Leto saw it, felt it, understood it, but we couldn’t just go about telling people that we had seen something in our minds, no one would believe us.’ Mabel’s eyes had become distant with thought as she placed a hand under her chin.

  ‘The Thirteen did mention this particle when I crossed over. That was before I came back as a Deykashee soul to my dear little Bethany,’ Mabel said.

  ‘We hope it will be discovered eventually but Kyle and Alice were supposed to be the brains behind the research. I’ve tried but I can’t do it on my own. The four of us were supposed to work together; we made up the magic number.’ She paused as a frown marred her features. ‘If someone else discovers it, much later, they may not think in the same ways as Kyle does and that could potentially have disastrous consequences. This knowledge is vital for the direction of mankind.’

  ‘But you said that Alice and Kyle were supposed to be together for this to happen. How can that be if she’s a Deykashee soul? Does Kyle have your gifts?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Sophia said with a shake of her head. ‘I don’t think he can see her, and his soul is very grey.’

  ‘How grey?’ Mabel asked.

  ‘It covers his entire soul and virtually blocks out all of his other colours,’ Sophia replied.

  ‘He’s been nurturing it for a while then.’

  ‘It’s not surprising but that’s what I’ve been afraid of,’ Sophia said. ‘Mourning isn’t a crime but the extent of his despair is fuelling Negative energy around him.’ Sophia shuddered; the mere mention of Negative energy always made her anxious. She strived to avoid it; the energy was unpredictable and manipulative, it would creep into your thoughts and emotions, make you uncomfortable by reminding you of a bad memory, and then disappear just as quickly. When it succeeded in pulling a person into a Negative spiral, reminding them constantly of their mistakes, or refuelling their hatred, pain, and anger, then it could cause relentless problems. Sophia already accepted her mistakes; she didn’t need Negative to remind her. ‘He already attracts it because of who he is, but he’s making it stronger and he doesn’t even realise…’

  ‘None of the living realise,’ Mabel interrupted. ‘If the living believed the truth about the afterlife then most of the problems in the world would have been sorted out by now.’

  ‘That’s why we need Kyle,” Sophia said. “Something changed recently, just after I moved in to my room actually. There was a disturbance in the timelines, did you feel it?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “I saw Alice and Kyle, and a book, just like this picture…” Sophia said pointing to the sketch. “I’m not sure what it means anymore, and my grandma, Flo, wasn’t sure either when I spoke to her on the phone yesterday, but we think a remote possibility has been thrown into the mix, something that might be able to steer humanity onto a better path.”

  “And what do you plan to do about it?” Mabel asked. “Don’t you think sometimes it would be better not to intervene?” Sophia grimaced as one of her memories flashed behind her eyes, a boy with vacant eyes and a strangled smile. She had asked herself that question many times before; she had failed once and it had left its mark on her soul.

  “I’m not planning to do anything right now. I’ll watch and see.”

  Nine

  Kyle let out a sharp hiss as he suffered another mild static shock. He’d been getting them ever since he’d returned from the post office yesterday, and his hair refused to stay down unless it was heavily gelled. He shook his right hand and sucked the end of his forefinger; almost everything he touched was making him spark like a faulty plug socket. It was the twenty second of October, a Saturday evening, and Kyle was up late reading one of the books he had borrowed from the library. It discussed and explained quantum entanglement – a strange phenomenon where two particles or a pairs of particles, could be observed independently in their opposing quantum states, instantly, regardless of distance. It was one of the most complicated and weirdest features of quantum physics; Albert Einstein had famously referred to it as ‘Spooky action at a distance’.

  He had borrowed business books too, for his assignments, all about finance, management, and marketing, but they didn’t hold his attention for more than a paragraph at a time. His phone buzzed on the desk beside him, and he tore his eyes away from the book. It was a text from Hailey; Happy Birthday brother! it read. Now you’re an old fart. Love, Hailey. She had ended it with a line of kisses. He glanced at the time; it was a minute past midnight, so technically she was right, it was his birthday, his twenty-first birthday. He was surprised and relieved that Cameron hadn’t insisted on going out, and he felt a little guilty about not going home too. He hated upsetting his mum, but she didn’t understand; he just wanted to be left alone. He sighed as his gaze settled on the small collection of unopened post at the foot of his bed. I guess I should open them now, he thought.

  He opened all the cards first, putting them into a drawer under his desk as he finished reading them. Most of his relatives had sent him cash or gift cards; Hailey had included a bracelet with her card. It was elasticated and made out of alternating black matted and silver metal rectangles. He slipped it over his right wrist and placed her card into the drawer with
the others.

  Finally his hands settled on the larger envelope. It was about the size of an A4 piece of paper and it had a red, blue and white plastic covering. It was padded, and he could feel a solid, rectangular object inside. He scrutinised the outside. It had been delivered by Air Mail and had ‘Registered Post International’ printed on it in big white letters. He couldn’t think of anyone who lived abroad. His gaze caught a line of much smaller letters in the top right corner, printed in white italics, ‘Postage Paid, Australia’. The air suddenly felt like grit as it passed down the back of his throat, robbing the moisture from his tissues. Australia? He knew of only one person who could have possibly sent him post from Australia – Alice’s sister, Talia.

  Kyle’s grip tightened around the envelope, his fingers almost ripping into the plastic. Why would she send something now? They had moved to get away, to cut all ties, to start again, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? He let out a deep breath as he tore open the end of the envelope. He reached inside quickly and fished out the object. It slipped from his shaky grasp and tumbled to the floor in two parts. It was a black notebook he realised, and one of its pages had fallen out. He cursed and swooped up the items, mixed emotions overwhelming his frustration. His eyes automatically scanned the single page. It was plain, with one of its longest edges torn; he wondered if it had ripped as the book fell or if it had been ripped out deliberately. On the page was a single line of handwritten words. His heart spluttered, choking, his neurons failing to relay the correct messages. This was her handwriting, her curved and rounded words, the lines of ink worked from her hand. He recognised it instantly, but he had never thought it would ambush his eyes like this. He glanced at the notebook, his gaze running over the cover where she had taken a silver pen and drawn delicate patterns, interweaving webs of endless turns and pointed edges. At the centre there was a small untouched bubble, containing one word, one name, Kyle.