The Third Eye (24 page)

“No,” Karen said. “I told him where to go.”

She knew as she spoke that her father would not believe her. She also knew that he would not pursue the question, for he did not want to be forced to accept her answer. She did not know which of her parents it was who shook her awake when they reached the house. She was conscious of hands on her shoulders and a voice speaking her name.

Then she was outside, crossing the lawn, entering the front door, and climbing the stairs to the second floor. Despite the
weight of weariness that threatened to smother her, she kept moving on down the hall to its end.

When she entered her room, the half-filled suitcase still sat open on her bed, just as she had left it two days before. Too exhausted to face the prospect of putting the clothes away, Karen shoved the case off the side of the bed and watched its contents tumble out onto the rug.

The temptation to sink down onto the vacated mattress was almost irresistible. She knew, however, that this could not yet be allowed to happen.

With a tremendous effort of will, she turned away from the beckoning bed and, as was her custom when under stress, crossed to stand at the window. In the world outside, the summer twilight was thick and golden as honey. Cicadas chanted in the trees in a drowsy, monotonous chorus. In the house next door, someone was playing the piano. The faint, silver tinkle trickled across the space between the houses and blended with the sounds of children playing in a neighboring yard.

“Oll-y—oll-y—oxen—free!” a young voice shrilled.

Hide-and-seek in the gathering dusk: a game of childhood.

In her own childhood, she had never been asked to play.

Karen Connors: seeker of missing children. I will play the game now as an adult for the rest of my life.

Time passed, and Karen waited. At last, she heard the footsteps she had been anticipating. They came clicking down
the hall and stopped at the open doorway. There was a long moment of silence.

Her mother’s voice spoke hesitantly. “May I come in?”

Wordlessly, Karen nodded. The footsteps advanced into the room and muffled themselves in the bedroom carpet. The door closed with a gentle click.

Karen spoke without turning.

“Don’t you think it’s time that you told me the truth?”

“You already know it,” her mother said quietly. “You’ve figured it out. You know I was the one who made the phone call to Denver. As soon as I realized you’d left this house, I knew you were headed into terrible danger.”

“You knew that, too, on the day the children were taken.”

The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall together, but the picture they were forming was one she never would have imagined. “You were standing folding laundry when you had the vision. Why didn’t you call the police and send them to the Tumbleweed?”

“I didn’t know where it was,” her mother told her. “It was all too foggy. I knew you were hurt and that you were in a kitchen. I thought, perhaps, it was the kitchen at the day care center. That’s why I tried to call you there.”

“How could you find me in another state when you couldn’t right here?”

“I have no idea. I simply found that I could. I could see that location in my mind as clearly as though it were marked on a
map. I saw each turn of the road. I saw the house, the river… I could even see that awful dog. There’s nothing logical about this gift of ours, Karen. I gave up trying to make sense of it years ago.”

Now Karen did turn. She regarded her mother incredulously. “
Years ago?
Do you mean that you’ve
always
been a psychic?”

“I am
not
a psychic,” Mrs. Connors said vehemently. “I refuse to be classified that way. It’s true that I was born with certain abilities, but I’ve never made any attempt to develop and use them. I’ve always hated them. They made my childhood miserable. The other children sensed I was different and I was left out of everything.”

“But you’ve always told me how popular you were!” Karen exclaimed. “You had so many friends! You were in all the school clubs! All the boys were in love with you!”

“That was how I wished my life could have been,” Mrs. Connors said. “It’s what I’ve wanted for you. The truth of it is, I had no friends at all. I never went to parties or to dances. Boys were uncomfortable around me. The first date I ever had was with your father.”

“Your very first date was with
Dad
?”

“It was the spring I graduated from high school. Your father was doing accounting work for my father. He’d been over at the house all day, working on the income taxes, and my mother invited him to stay for dinner. Your dad was in his thirties and had never been married. He’d been too wrapped up in
his work to develop a social life. He thought I was pretty, and I was. I looked a lot like you do now. He didn’t sense anything different about me. As you know, your father is not particularly perceptive.”

“You fell in love?” Karen ventured.

“It was love of a sort, but not the romantic kind. Your father was pleasant and kind, and my parents approved of him. I was afraid I might never have another opportunity to marry. I knew that I had to do something about finding a husband. You were waiting to be born.”

“I was…
waiting
?”

“I’d seen you in dreams,” her mother said matter-of-factly. “You were there whenever my life was in any way threatened. The first time I saw you was in a fever dream. I had pneumonia, and the doctors were afraid that I wouldn’t pull through. The second time was several years later. I was driving through an intersection, and suddenly, out of the blue, your face flashed in front of me. I was so startled that I instinctively hit the brakes. An instant later, a car came barreling through a stop sign. If I hadn’t stopped when I did, I would have been killed. I can only speculate that on your part it was a form of self-preservation. If my life had ended before you were born, you could never have come into being.”

“Did you ever see other children?” Karen asked shakily. “Did you see lost kids, the way I saw Bobby and Carla?”

“Yes, but they came in nightmares. My ‘black dreams,’ I used to call them, and they were horrible. For years I kept seeing
them, those strange, frightened children who kept screaming to me to come to them. If I’d let them, they would have taken over my life. I held strong against them, though, and you can also. Except for these two recent instances when you were the one in danger, I haven’t allowed myself a vision in almost thirteen years.”

“I don’t think I can turn away like that,” Karen said.

“Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve been saying?” Her mother’s voice was sharp with exasperation. “Don’t you want marriage—children of your own—a normal life? No man wants to marry a freak, no matter how pretty she is. Look what happened to your relationship with Tim!”

She paused. When she spoke again, her tone was less strident.

“You have a chance to build a whole new image for yourself at college. You can meet somebody nice there and never let him find out about this. You can build yourself the same sort of happy life I have.”

“Mom,” Karen asked softly, “are you really all that happy?”

“Well, of course,” her mother said.

“Then why do you seem worried all the time? Why do you keep having migraines?”

“I’m headache-prone. Lots of people have that problem. I’ve been having migraines since you were five years old.”

“Mom, I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I know you want what you think is best for me, but I can’t live my life the way you do yours.
If, for some reason known only to God, I’ve been blessed with extra sight, I’m going to learn how to use it as well as I can.”

“That vision I had thirteen years ago when you were five,” her mother said. “That final vision was the one that made me close it all off.”

“Was it Mickey Duggin?”

Her mother nodded.

“You weren’t the one who found him. I was. What followed after that was a total nightmare. Those letters and phone calls, the strangers ringing our doorbell, the people on our front lawn, trying to see in our windows. Your father was horrified. The pressure it put on our marriage came close to destroying it.”

“It won’t be like that for me,” Karen said with confidence. “The man I marry will accept me for what I am.”

“I hope so,” her mother said softly. “Oh, baby, I hope so.”

She reached out her hand and touched Karen’s cheek. The unfamiliar gesture, the gentleness of it, was so much out of character that Karen could not answer her at all.

That night she dreamed again of the small blond girl. The child was standing in a living room that was decorated in the same shades of blues and lavenders as Karen’s current bedroom. Behind her, on a low bookcase, there stood a framed photograph of two women posed together on a stairway. The younger woman was dressed in a graduation gown. The photographer had evidently caught them at a moment at which
they had not been expecting it, for the second woman was not looking into the camera lens.

She had turned, instead, to gaze at the girl beside her, and on her face there was an expression of such pride and love that the intensity of it was almost unbearable to contemplate.

But it was the dream-child that Karen stared at in fascination.

My dear little daughter, who will your daddy be?

The girl raised her head. For the first time ever, Karen was able to see her eyes.

They were blue as a mountain lake. Blue as the summer skies of Colorado.

They were the strange sort of brilliant, heaven-sent blue that might run in one special family. As a dominant trait.

Young adult authors Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks

sat down with Lois Duncan to ask her all about

THE THIRD EYE