Tales of the near future: clairvoyance

I kept yesterday's assumption about the image to myself. Knowing something is stalking Andrés as the image yesterday in the well of the Horns Falls is already too bad to be true. I've had this vision or kind of vision before. It has always meant to me a great compromise of the clients with their little madness. When I first arrived here, I had a portrait of a pre-teen with a certain obsession for a particular subject, something that, according to the kid's parents started to take its toll in the kid's social life (here symbolized by the grades at school). One or two days after I run into this image inside the well. When these images loom in front of me, usually tell me there's more to the situation than just an obsession. Teens are naturally prone to storing fixations, but these vanish in time. As a phase, yes, that's what it is, a phase.

At breakfast, we have Duílio commenting about cattle thieves that are pestering the community. He says there are no crimes occuring in the city, since the community has a high degree of awareness in that issue. Besides, few people from the outside if any come to town and everyone in town knows one another pretty well, what does happen in a 2,000-inhabitant town.

"Now they're stealing calves, how come?"

Aparecida said they were most likely to have come from other towns around. Were it someone from town then everybody would know, the city is much too small. Duílio had to agree. Adriano added that he didn't remember a time when it happened in the city in his living memory. Andrés only listened in, it seemed. He just said nothing at all.

"We'll meet tonight", the father said, "propose a tighter surveillance net around the farms. Sooner or later we'll catch the scoundrels."

"What will you do when you catch them?", asked Adriano.

I heard it all looking at the bottom of my coffee mug, still I had the impression of hearing a discreet "ouch" somewhere very near. There followed a silence, heavy, unexpected. Or expected? I glanced beside myself to find Adriano stroking what seemed to be his shin under the table. Looked away from him, at the right time to avoid Aparecida and Duílio's look falling over me. Lest they perceived that I realized Adriano had asked what the great writer from Araraquara, Ignácio de Loyola Brandão would call "indigestible question".

"Can I go with you to that meeting?" Andrés asked.

Duílio thought for ages before agreeing to take Andrés along. Aparecida still tried to talk the husband out of taking the kid, but he said Andrés would be better off if he learned the doings of his community from a child. He said nothing about Adriano, perhaps on account of the indigestible question. I decided to test something and asked to be taken to the meeting too. Duílio said it was going to be really boring at the meeting. That I'd be bored to death. I told him it would not bore me as much as it would Andrés. He eventually showed me he wouldn't take me anywhere tonight even for the world and I gave in. Though no one there would kick me on the shin under the table, I felt I too had asked an indigestible question.

I believe blindly in Duílio when he says I'd get bored to death at the meeting. In fact, I asked him to go not because I felt like or hoped to go, but because I wanted to see his reaction to my request. See how he would treat the meeting, if something frank and open or something shady, screened, secluded. And I guess it is going to be something restricted to townspeople and local farmers. No strangers or outsiders poking their noses on local issues. Duílio left for school to take his two kids.

"It is not the first time it's happened", Aparecida told me after breakfast when we two were alone in the kitchen, "but it's the first time I've seen calves being stolen."

"It must happen often in the country, mustn't it?"

"Actually, it doesn't. People here are really aware of everything."

I felt a certain urgency in asking her why Adriano got kicked under the table, but held my horses. Don't know what side of the issue she's on. Don't even know what issue has arisen for the community, though some pieces of the puzzle have already fit. Few, but have already fallen into place.

At night I stay under the small rooftop by the tall tree where Adriano and I talked about his grandfather. Watching the day's last rainfall. The true darkness of the night, only sounds of crickets and frogs. The sounds distract and relax me in the night. They induce me to a state of relaxation that in turn induces me to several nocturnal trances. I let my mind wander around aimlessly. Radio Universal was a nickname given to me as a child by my grandmother. She herself was no stranger to the world of psychic sciences. She knew I stayed in these vigil states of mind aware of everything around me, also aware of things that could not be seen with a normal sight. She knew I had developed my extra-sensorial perception.

Don't ask me how long I stayed there. Within the relaxing sound of crickets and the frog percussion ensemble. Opened my eyes and saw what looked like a pickaxe at my side, a spade in front of me and a hoe on the other side. To think I hadn't seen these objects when I came under. At this moment I hear a distant ringtone of a cell-phone inside the farm's house.

I bent to pick up the spade, but there was nothing there. I mean, the spade was there but I could not hold it, because it had no solid body. It was more like the idea of a spade. The pickaxe and hoe rendered the same result when I tried to touch them. These where thought-shapes left here, maybe for their daily usage on a farm. Just maybe. Anyone else would have fled the rooftop as fast as their legs could run should they run into this. Simple things as the thought-shapes can scare the hell out of those who have never experienced clairvoyance.

I stood up and left the tools behind under the rooftop. Walked around a bit feeling the last drops from the trees land on top of my head. When I came closer to the rooftop again, I heard the characteristic noise of the screen door's coils at the porch. Adriano walked out of the porch bringing heavy objects with him. I was surprised to see him carry a hoe, a pickaxe and a spade, but all of a sudden it made a hell of a sense. I hid behind a tree near the rooftop where I wouldn't be seen even by someone entering the place.

I looked fixedly at the tools on the ground. Adriano entered the rooftop carrying the tools and dropped them carelessly to the ground. What surprised me more than anything happened at this moment: the tools all fell exactly in the position the thought-shapes occupied. Not an inch out of position. I could see the thought-shapes shining through but there was no duplication of their image with the physical tools. It just amazed me. I've heard of clairvoyants who've seen even stranger things, but this plainness of what I saw has made a real impression on me (weren't I used to all this in my life).

A noise of an engine could now be heard from a distance, fading in gradually until the blue headlights blazed onto the rooftop, shattering the jet black night. I squeezed against the tree lest I was shot by the light and seen by the three: Duílio, Andrés and Adriano. The car came to a stop, headlights went out, Andrés jumped as fast as he could to open the trunk of the car while Adriano collected the tools he had dropped under the rooftop, throwing them into the car's trunk. For some odd reason, the tools didn't sink to the bottom of the trunk as one would expect…

…with an empty trunk.

"Did anyone in there see you?", Duílio's voice came from a distance, earthed in the interior of the car.

"No, the two should be sleeping", replied Adriano.

"Should? You got nothing better for us than just should?" It was Andrés' voice now.

"Adriano, get in the car fast. Next time it's the Bastos to do it, I promise", begged the stuffy voice of Duílio from inside the car.

Adriano finally got in the car, slamming the door and they drove off, to the outside of the farm, into the fields. The car's engine noise faded away until it was nothing in the night atmosphere. And all of a sudden, all is silence again. I go back to the rooftop and the tools are still there. Untouched, it seemed. I knew it was the thought-shapes, even so I tried to touch them one more time. Yes. No solid body at all. Tool thought-shapes, that's all that has remained.

Two thoughts (and many questions) on the situation. What are the men of the house up to tonight? What was the outcome of the collective surveillance net meeting held tonight? Why should Adriano carry a hoe, a pickaxe and a spade, put them in a car trunk and depart into the night with his brother and father at somewhere between eleven-thirty and midnight? And more than that, why should no one but the three know what was going on? What leads me to the second thought: if they don't know I was there watching them load the car with the tools, then it would be advisable not to be seen out here when they come back wherever they may roam.

An engine in the distance. It might or mightn't be them. I won't risk seeming indiscreet at all. Quickly I climb the stairs back to the porch, come in the house, leaving the lights on as they had been left by the three. About one and a half hours later, I heard the sound of the car's engine back on the farm (this time it was really them), doors opening, shutting, the trunk opening, metal sounds from the tools hitting each other with the precision that can only be chiselled by the still of the country nights. Soon after they come in, I hear rug-muffled steps and soft voices of those not wanting to draw attention.

"We would take years digging like you did." I recognized Andrés' voice speaking.

"Still I dig better than you."

"Shut up the two of you. We don't want to wake up the ladies."

Then there was silence. No more noises, no more steps, no more voices. All was the still of the night. The frog percussion ensemble now prevailed again, together with the crickets and curiangos and other sounds of the country night. My eyes (despite all mental excitement) started going heavier and heavier.

Afterimage | Dead file

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