The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,24

and smelled of the fresh flowers decorating a buffet line full of snacks. Several people milled about, talking with one another and eating off paper plates, some sitting at small round tables. One of the men, Joel was startled to see, was a priest. Everyone looked so ordinary. Surely this wasn’t right. He turned to go before anyone spotted him.

“Joel!”

He looked back and saw Deb coming toward him, smiling broadly, and he felt a self-conscious grin appear on his face. “Hi.”

“You came,” she said, clearly pleased.

He nodded. “Thought I might check it out.”

“Not what you expected is it?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No. I thought…” He stopped, not sure how to finish.

Deb was nodding. “I know,” she said, and he truly believed she did. She motioned him toward the others. “Come on, let me introduce you to some folks.” He followed her toward the murmuring group, and nearly jumped a foot when she clapped her hands and said loudly, “All right, everyone, your attention, please.” They were all looking at him now, he noticed, but not in puzzlement; they seemed to already know why he was there. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Joel. He’s the one I told you about.”

They all greeted him, and Deb introduced them one by one in a flurry of names and faces he knew he would never remember. There was a young blonde girl who appeared to be in her late teens, and an old gentleman who looked at least eighty; everyone else fit somewhere in between, and seemed to come from all ethnic backgrounds and social circles. Deb introduced the priest last, a distinguished looking pudgy man with thick gray hair and blue eyes. “This is Father Michael. He’s not a sensitive himself, but he lets us use the church’s facilities for our meetings.”

Father Michael nodded to him. “Good to meet you, Joel. I think you’ll find everyone here is friendly and accommodating.”

Gradually, everyone drifted back into their own conversations, and Joel moved to take a seat at the table next to Father Michael. “So how did a priest get involved in something like this?” he said.

Father Michael smiled. “Deb’s one of my flock,” he said. “I’ve known of her gift for years, knew her struggle with accepting it. When she found a few others like herself, I encouraged her to start a group. They met at her house at first, but as more and more people became involved, she knew she had to have a larger place. I told her to feel free to use the church’s activity center.”

“That was nice.”

Father Michael shrugged. “Whole purpose of having the place.”

“So do you come here just to keep an eye on things or what?”

“I have a real interest in it, in what the old-timers call ‘second sight.’ I believe that it truly is a gift, though I understand the people who have it would tend to disagree.”

“Yeah,” Joel said. “Myself included.”

“Now, you take Joseph over there,” Father Michael said, pointing toward the old man Joel had noticed earlier. “When he was a young man, his family was convinced he was a demon. Or that he’d been touched by Satan. They were scared to death of him. Especially after…” The priest looked away.

“What?”

Father Michael looked back at him abruptly. “Did you ever hear of the big train disaster here in Springfield? Happened in ’twenty-five or ’twenty six.”

Joel nodded. Everyone knew that story. How a locomotive had jumped the track one sunny April morning and plowed right through Springfield Elementary School, completely demolishing the building. No one had even been scratched; all the students and teachers had gone to the town common for a picnic that day and the school had been empty.

“Joseph had organized the picnic downtown,” said Father Michael. “He knew something was going to happen that day. Saw it in a dream.”

“Really?” Joel looked at the man now, just a frail, little man dressed in a natty sports jacket and droopy trousers.

“I’m convinced,” the priest continued, “that God used Joseph’s ability that day to save those people.”

Joel stared at the wall, thinking about the train that had snuffed out the lives of his mother and stepfather. If he had known, if he could have seen, would he have warned them? Would he have kept them alive, even though it would have meant who knew how many more years of violent abuse from Clifton? He didn’t know; it was just a dead end question. Like what would have happened had the school been full.