Presentation of opportunity Chapter 2

Presentation of opportunity part 2

         The caravan’s interior was in chaos. His prized photos were strewn across the carpet, some smashed others crushed and bent where he and Marken had traversed the floor. The table was upturned as far as the adjoining wall would allow and the chairs were scattered around it. Lying to one side of the wreckage was Marken, eyes closed, face wan, looking as if life had fled his body. Halmonth knew he wasn't dead he could sense it. He could feel Marken’s life force, in a way he could reach out and touch it with his hand, it wasn't a guess it was cast iron certainty. The power that was dulling his physical senses was blessing him with acute mental awareness.
         He felt bodiless, a non physical entity, he perceived the world around him in a cocoon of almost mental presence. His sensory sharpness was mostly focused on Marken. He could sense the old mans pulse, feel his blood pump around the worn out veins as though they were his own. As he had dragged the psychic across the floor one of the photographs had jammed under him and stuck here under Marken ribs. Halmonth felt the sharp outline of the frame on his own ribs too even though he had no physical contact with the photo.
         A sudden duality swamped Halmonth. It didn’t feel as though he was standing in two places at once rather he felt as though he was sensing in two opposite places. He couldn’t extend this field of awareness beyond Marken; it was focused on him totally. His sense of the outside world was fading and Marken was fast becoming all he could feel and see. Marken roused slightly, Halmonth knew in an instance why. The strands that were feeding him his heightened ability were also nourishing Marken physically. The worn out effigy slowly started to move and taking a deep breath Marken struggled to a sitting position, which wasn’t easy with one arm anchored. He opened his eyes and looked at Halmonth in a bleary and unfocused gaze.
         Halmonth had trouble grasping the new scenario; it was if he was a single entity with two intellects, neither one in control. He was seeing through two sets of eyes, hearing through two sets of ears. Both mouths opened but the only sound came from Marken.
         "Thought," it came out as a dry wheezed noise and was cut off as Marken tried to swallow, Halmonth aped the action. "Thought I had enough strength left to see this through,” Halmonth's mouth moved in sync with Marken words “but I haven’t, good job I can borrow some from you ....need it to finish, to open the gate.”
         As Halmonth puzzled over the statement Marken did as he had promised and opened the gate.
         “Brace yourself,” with that warning Marken hunched his shoulders, the last of his energies (or the amount borrowed from Halmonth) spent.
         The heightened awareness that Halmonth had tasted was nothing compared to what was now rushing down the strands of his arm and into his body. He couldn’t stop the flow no more than he could rip his arm away from Marken. The power slashed into his flesh, his bones, his senses. It filled every empty part of him to overflowing and then continued pulsing into him, ripping him open and then refusing him with every pulse. Each part of him that was smashed was healed again, instantly, laced together with a power that was alien to him.
         A crack/pop noise from his arm/conduit alerted Halmonth's/Marken’s attention. Both heads turned, all sets of eyes focused on the strands that connected them together. The strands that had conducted most of Marken power across were burnt and fragile. They were cooked beyond flexibility and now had the consistency of frazzled breadsticks.
         Halmonth felt his singularity return. Marken’s eyes were glazed and lifeless and he began to slump once more to the ground. He hit the littered floor with a thud and his arm snapped away from Halmonth breaking the strands, and the connection between them, leaving only an air of blackened dust between them.
         Halmonth moved his charred hand to join the other one clasped against his temples, hardly noticing the burnt mass disintegrate as it hit the side of his skull, he was far too busy trying to keep his sanity inside his head. The raging tornado of mental anguish was all consuming and he felt no pain as he crashed to the floor and joined Marken’s prone form, he laid there twitching as the power seated and threaded itself within him. Each part of him was simultaneously bathed in an ocean of energy; he could feel it being absorbed but there surely too much for him to take in. He didn’t have the capacity for all this unstoppable might, it would wipe him out, erase him under its behemoth strength.
         He had reached the point where his sanity would shatter and he felt madness begin to descend when the transference flickered out and died, almost as if a circuit breaker had popped somewhere in his psyche. He felt himself spiral down to normality and opened his eyes. He had blurred vision as though he had just surfaced from underwater. Slowly the caravan’s floor reappeared, its walls rematerialised as Halmonth regained control of himself and claimed back his mind.
         His sight was different, sort of unstable and then the shock came to him, his eyes were unopened; whatever vision he was receiving it was not going through his optic nerves. He could ’see’ Marken on the floor next to him, he could 'see' his surroundings, but he could also see their odours and feel their textures with his 'sight'. Something else struck him; around each object in his non optical sight was an aura. Each aura blazed with a different light/ smell/ taste and emanated not from the outside but from the very inside as if each object were generating them.
         Something new throbbed inside him, he had acquired a new organ of sense, one that condensed all the senses and read them as one single data stream, but the stream was too rich in content. He was bombarded with information from all around him, every scent, every fabric, every...thing was translated by his new sense. He could feel the pile on the carpet, the heat from the light in the ceiling, the movement of coolant from the back of the refrigerator, the wind blowing over the caravan, the wind blowing under the caravan....get a grip, get a grip, GET A GRIP.
         He needed a focal point something to anchor his attention to before he was driven mad by this maelstrom of flavours. He focused on one of the largest items in the room, the oak table; it was solid and big enough for him to concentrate on. He found he didn't have to move his head to bring it into view; he just targeted his new found sense upon it. Forcing his mind to ignore the invading clouds of sensory information and bared down on the table.
         He didn't move, the table didn't move but somehow as he concentrated on it he became closer to the table and entered its aura. The bombardment was slowly left behind him as the table filled his senses. His concentration was no longer required, for now he had pierced its aura the table demanded to be read literally throwing its information at Halmonth. He stopped concentrating on the table and started to concentrate on controlling the rate the data blasted at him. The act of slowing the process down came to him almost instinctively and it was thanks to the fact of what he did for a living: a pseudo-psychic. In his job he had taught himself to have a steel will, to concentrate on certain facts, to pull the answers out of his customers, he now put that will into action.
         Of all the tables scents/textures/tastes coming at him he picked one to focus on and concentrated on it with all his might. The target of his focused will was the material the table was made of, he tried to single it out and dampen all the others.
         It worked up to a point. He found he could open up that part of the flow and cancel out the rest, but to his dismay he was now beginning to be overwhelmed by the information fed to him about the substance of the table. He could feel the oak, taste its dry flavour, smell its earthiness, comprehend its strength, he was drowning again. The thought that he was going to be poisoned by over-knowledge hammered into him.
         He wanted to flee, to sprint away from this deluge of knowing but knew there was no where to run to, no where he could escape his awareness. The hopeful thought of escaping the flood of data by focusing on one thing died within him. He could focus on what he wanted but behind that door there was another rush of knowledge waiting to smother him in its heavy weight. He pulled away from the oaks aura and back into the table’s aura planning to at least be aware of his own body when he finally went insane.
         Transferring over from the auras he felt it, a momentary click of nothingness. There was a point in the act of moving from one aura to the next where everything died out, where each aura cancelled out itself. It was just a sliver of time in the act of transference, but it was definitely there. He swapped back and felt it again, a singularity of peaceful vacuum appeared and then vanished in the space of half a heartbeat.
         Once again he had to call upon his will power, to draw on its reserves and feed him strength. He tried to lock on the point between auras, tried to seize hold of the peacefulness, but it ticked and tocked through his control one way and then the other. He flexed his controlled will and the place he desired to reach came closer and as it came closer he found he could grasp it tighter. The spaces of normality became longer and more sustained as he became used to juggling the different states and finally he reached it, peace.
         The madness that had invaded his mind ceased as he held the balance, keeping himself between states, avoiding any information thrown at him. Letting out a sigh of relief he relished the calm inside his head. It was a mistake. As soon as he began to relax the information began smashing into his senses again.
         Another minute or two of intense concentration was needed to bring back that calm equilibrium; he maintained the balance, kept himself shielded. It took a considerable amount of willpower to stay in the mental state but for the sake of his sanity he had no other option. After a few minutes or a few hours (it was difficult for him to keep a grasp on time) he found he could keep the stability of his mental state with less effort and began to relax again, only for a little at a time until the act became only a small strain on him.
         His other senses had been stunned into hibernation, crushed under the weight of his new ability. Now he had got it more or less under control he became aware of how isolated from the real world he was. He could feel nothing, see nothing, he only existed in the balance that he strained to keep even. The more he kept that balance the more natural the effort to keep that balance felt, the more instinctive and automatic the process became.
         Panic over: he floated adrift in a comfortable vacuum, one he felt he could maintain with a minimum of effort. As long as he kept conscious of holding his place, keeping away from the flood of information, he felt he could use the rest of his mental powers to contact his other senses again.
         He probed the darkness that engulfed him, looking, felling for a way back to normality, he couldn’t find it, there was nothing there for him. Perhaps he was going about this the wrong way, he could spend a life time looking for a way out of this sense-dampened prison.
         Once again his skills as a con-man benefited him. He remembered the trick of how to sound convincing to his clients and that was to fool himself into believing he really was a psychic. If he believed truly that he had psychic powers it would make him sound more natural to his customers. He could apply this trick to the situation he was in and make himself believe could feel again.
         He focused on his sense of touch and imagined he could feel his hand running through the pile of the carpet, that he could feel every knot and thread that it was made of….. No luck. He tried again, this time grasping as hard as he could making his imaginary hand clasp and pull. A slight sensation appeared to him, travelled down his nerves and into his fuddled brain. He couldn’t tell what the sensation indicated but it was there and he concentrated on it hungrily. He was expecting to be reunited with his hand running across the carpet but somehow it didn’t feel right.
         A sharp increasing pain ripped him back into reality. There was no slow merging from one dimension to the other, it took a sharp snap and then he was back. His senses were filled immediately, his touch, his sight, each one filled to brimming but they were all overridden by one commanding sensation: pain.
         His hand was aflame with agony. The last he saw it it was coated with the charred remains of the connecting mass left from when it had snapped away from Marken. Most of the coating had now left his hand, leaving dark patches on his carpet, lumps of it were scattered around the room and a thick charcoal smudge streaked half of his face where he had clasped his hand against it. He brought his hand up to his face; the black grime that covered it was now shot through with red cracks of raw skin which glistened as they caught the light. Flexing it gave him acute pain as the splits in his skin contracted and warped. He stopped playing with his hand and let it slowly and tenderly make its way into his lap.
         He looked around with new eyes.
         The result of Marken’s gift had been worth the nightmare of its transference. The auras around each object were not as strong as when he had first encountered them, but they were certainly noticeable. Each piece of furniture, every ornament, light fitting, piece of electrical equipment, in fact everything he could see swam in its own pool of information. Halmonth knew he now had the power to reach out and tap into that residue of knowledge and he could find out anything he wanted to know about the object. Each aura was different, some vibrated, some sent waves of distortion into the air, some took energy from their surroundings, some did all of this and some didn’t. Each and every aura was unique, but there was one aura that stood out from the rest
         He stared at Marken’s twisted form lying at one side of the room. His aura clothed him in a cloak of opulent colour; he seemed to be sheathed in mother of pearl. Without moving Halmonth tried to enter Marken’s aura. His consciousness floated across the shattered room towards the battered body and reached the perimeter of its aura. Instead of entering he felt his new sense slide around the shimmering coat. He couldn’t penetrate no matter how much force he used, he just stopped at the outside layer, like a fly trying to get through a window.
         He withdrew and tested his power on other items in the room. He had little or no trouble reading them, but the information he received was inanimate, lacking substance, this he realised was because the items had no life force. Now he had control of this power he could flip through the layers of any aura as one would through the pages of a book and the information he took from them, although wondrous, didn’t have any life in it.
         He cast his mental net wider, beyond the constraints of his caravan and out into the surrounding trailers and vehicles that encompassed the circus. He could feel vague shapes and whispers of auras, the distance made it difficult for him to read but he could tell in an instance the difference between them. The inanimate auras of the trailers and their contents blurred together to form a dull mist. Standing out from this mist was the shimmering, mother of pearl auras of his colleagues. They were to far away to get any solid readings on them but he could tell which aura belongs to which human instinctively. Faint hints of personality and history emanated from each aura and he knew if he were closer and had the time he would be able to pull their deep fears and secrets into his mind.
         He had to draw back into his own mind. The exertion of the past hour or so had left him exhausted and he felt himself start to blackout. Putting his head down and taking deep breaths he managed to catch himself and stop from fainting. When the black stars of exhaustion had stopped invading his vision he looked over to where Marken lay. Why couldn't he read Marken when his colleagues were like open books to him?
         Marken was on his front with one arm underneath him and one, still encased in the blackened remains of the connecting mass, at his side. His legs were crossed over each other and he had lost one shoe. There was no movement fro him, no twitch, no groan of pain and most importantly no rise and fall of his chest.
         Halmonth tried to use his power again but he was spent. The little resolve he had left was used to keep the auras from crashing into his head. Perhaps that’s why I can't read him, Halmonth pondered, he’s dead and all I'm sensing is his residue of life. He remembered Marken last words, that he had to borrow from Halmonth to see this act through.
         Although his world was awash with pain Halmonth smiled and he addressed the dead form of Marken. "Well I’ve made it through, looks like I’ve passed the entrance exam. What’s my grade?"
         No movement, no answer.
         "Don't look so good yourself and to be perfectly honest, it seems to me as though you’ve had trouble passing the final."
         Once again no movement, no answer.
         Halmonth let out a derogative snort. "Some psychic you were, so willing to pass on all that power but lacking the insight to know what I was going to do with it once I had it. Shall I tell you," Halmonth didn't wait for an answer,” I'm going to show you and your shitty little guild what can really be done with this power. You may have your rules and regulations, but they don't exist for me, oh no. I'm telling you buddy Halmonth's on his way to the top floor."
         Halmonth pitched his voice into a high whine that mocked Marken. "Oh we of the guild must not misuse the power. We must become a moral compass." Back in his normal voice he added, " there’s only one direction that compass is pointing and its straight to my fucking wallet."
         He chuckled at his own good humour despite the pain he was feeling, he closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. Even with his eyes shut he noticed the change in Marken’s aura, it was more vibrant and fluid. With a small shock (after all he had been through small was all he could muster) Halmonth realised he was still alive and listening to him; let him then, he wasn’t a threat to him anymore, he had the power now.
         "Your still here then?" Halmonth said without opening his eyes.
         Croaky and dry came the answer. "Still here, you gloat magnificently Karl it suits you quite well."
         Halmonth opened his eyes and looked on him with contempt. "Screw you Marken, now that I have the power I'm gonna make all of you idiots at the guild see what really can be done with it when a real man has it, a man with bravery and vision. I'll do things you worms dare not even think about let alone do."
         Marken’s face seemed as dry as his voice, Halmonth thought the old mans face would crumble to dust as a thin sardonic smile ate into it and through the smile he half whispered “Oh dear you are in for a surprise.”
         Halmonth noticed that he still couldn’t read him, the aura that looked like a thousand butterfly wings covering Marken was resistant to his probing. He was puzzled by Marken’s statement and decided to fight back with bravado. He prodded his ruined hand against his chest, “I'll be the one handing out surprises from now on.”
         The smile softened. “You're just like me Karl, or just like I used to be. All through my apprenticeship I strove to keep my thoughts to my self, the thoughts of what I would do with the power once I had obtained it and all though I was surrounded by psychics not one of them caught onto me. I was in the company of the most powerful mind readers on earth and none of them realized what I had planned and being invisible to them in that way filled me with a terrible arrogance.”
         “You could dodge them reading you, become invisible to them?” Halmonth mocked. “But you still towed the line didn't you; you still did as you were told that much is evident. You are still in the guild, any sniff of wrong doing and you would have been thrown out. You could have done anything and got away with it, they wouldn't have known.”
         Marken shook his head, his grey hair standing out in all directions. “I did and they didn't throw me out, I don't think they even knew what I did, they suspected but they could never prove anything, so in the guild I stayed.”
         “I don't understand, what did you do?”
         “I did what you plan to do, take control of unsuspecting victims, or should I say victim because I was only allowed to attempt it once.”
         "Allowed... by whom, what stopped you?”
         "I don't know. I had passed the test and been bequeathed the power by my tutor, in very much the manner I gave you the power I once held. My tutor didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do with the power as did no one else. I decided to give myself a year to get used to welding the power until I would try to bend someone to my will."
         "Oh shit that's it isn't it, you've already done it," Halmonth felt a small tremor of excitement nibble at him. There was more to learn from Marken, if he had indeed possessed someone he could pass the technique on to him. His thrilled state slowly halted as a nasty thought invaded his thinking and a cold finger of dread prodded him in the stomach as it dawned on him that Marken could be here for another purpose, “And now what....are you here to possess me."
         “No, no you're safe from me,” he placed a heavy emphasis on the last word,                                        “you have the power now and I'm only a weak old man, I can’t threaten you. But let me tell you this, you are to be my path to redemption Karl.”
         The statement made Halmonth shoot him a puzzled look, Marken raised his eyebrows in a sagely manner and continued. “The moment I tried the possession was the moment I knew I was doomed. Something split my reality apart as I was preparing the act of control, something reached inside me and gave my soul a very tight squeeze. I could feel it fingers grasping part of me I didn't know even existed.”
         Halmonth shook his head vigorously. “You’re lying, trying to frighten me. It wont work Marken nothing can divert my course.”
         “Am I? You'll heed my warning soon enough.”
         “Bullshit! “ Halmonth spat at him.
         It was Marken’s turn to shake his head; a slow, rueful nod. “The grip upon me dug deep, holding my mind. Physically I could move, spiritually I was held fast.”
         Halmonth controlled his anger just as he had controlled his new power. He thought that Marken might be trying to scare him into not using the power how he wanted to use it. “I suppose it whispered to you then didn't it, told you were abusing your power, how you must cease on pain of eternal damnation or some such thing,” sarcasm dripped from him.
         “No it didn't.”
         “Then what did it do then?  Smack your hand and tell you to behave” Halmonth offered him a sinister grin.
         “It showed me what must be done to redeem myself.”
         “Did it tell you to become a nun,” he chuckled, stared deep into Marken’s face and said slowly “I...don’t...believe...you.”
         “I was shown your face, told when we would meet and what I had to do.” Marken stared back with honesty written in his face. ”That was twenty years ago, a life time ago. Since that day I have walked a true path. I have helped hundreds attain their goals and dreams, pointed them in the right direction.”
         “So what now? Your redemption is to give me the power, that’s not very smart of you Marken. Do you think that I'm going to stop where you were to chickenshit to continue? No way am I going to do this half arsed, I'm going to follow this through no matter how much you try and put me off.”
          “Idiot!” The old mans placid facade gave way to anger and made Halmonth jump. “My redemption does not lie in the fact I have given you the power, it lies in what is to follow. I am here to show you what will befall you if you abuse your position.” Marken eyes swept the room as if looking for something. “In twenty years this could be your fate if your path does not run true.”
         He held his gaze for a moment longer and then his anger fled him; his chin sank into his chest. His voice became a sigh and Halmonth got the feeling that he was talking to himself. “All my adult life I have dreaded this coming but now the time has come I welcome it.” Marken dragged his head up, the sudden change shocked Halmonth. In an instance his eyes had turned to sludge weeping down his face. The tracks burned deep into his face leaving lines of sore, open flesh.
         He opened his mouth to speak; rotten teeth fell from it and landed on his shirt burning their way into the fabric. He gagged once and spoke his last words which were chased out of his throat by a fetid tube of rancid smoke; it sounded more of a plea than an order. “Don’t waste the gift.”
         Halmonth's heart threatened to drive its way out of his chest, his whole body trembled in shock and fear at the apparition before him. Marken looked, and smelt like he had been deep fried at a fast food joint. His skin sizzled and popped as the heat, which came from god knows where, cooked him. The smell, his smell, made its home in the back of Halmonth's throat and stayed there biting into his taste buds. What amazed him the most was that although Marken was a sight from hell he was still covered by the beautiful aura that had always surrounded him turning him into a well done steak with a halo.
         Halmonth puffed his cheeks in and out driving air into his lungs trying to calm himself and slow his heart rate down. He only succeeded in concentrating the smell at the back of his throat. It was too much and his stomach retaliated and heaved its contents up his throat and replacing the smell with its own acidic sting. He managed to get to his knees before the stream of digested bile shot from him and splashed on the chaotic carpet. He retched again, another jet of spew came from him, a deep gasp of a breath followed immediately by spasm from his belly, this time a few drops of spittle came from him. He carried on in this fashion until there was nothing left inside him. He let his head rest on his knees, the tears streaming from his eyes dropping to the floor.
         He stayed like that until the blood rushing around his eardrums lessened in pressure and he no longer felt as though his heart was in his head. As the internal whoosh faded away he became aware of another noise, whether it came from one direction or many he couldn't tell, but it was getting louder not in volume but in strength. The noise increased in a vibratory way, it was a mix of gravel being crushed together, of the scrunch of cellophane, of the deep bass hum of loudspeakers before they burst, of the ever annoying chalk running down its board all wrapped up in an oncoming train of sound. It pulsed in a random manner, like a gigantic Morse code tapped away to a demented beat.
         Halmonth could feel the beat behind his eyeballs, each thrum making his vision blur. He looked around trying to discern the origin of the noise and noticed that the auras were crackling and flaring in time with the rhythm. The vibrations increased in speed until the beat became a constant rasping hum and the auras began to flare and spark like small suns throwing of stabs of coloured energy across the room of Halmonth's caravan. The flares blended where they met, like drops of water colours splashing into each other and gelled together forming spheres of frothy, bubbling, energy and colour. The spheres grew in size as they were fed by the agitated auras.
         The tone of the vibration changed to a deep growling throb. He could feel the throb rubbing his insides together, his teeth ached as their nerves jangled in their sockets. The sound now had an origin, it came from one of the largest spheres that populated the room, it wobbled and was nearly shaken to pieces by the force of the vibration. As the sound gave off one of its loudest thumps the surface of the sphere rippled and broke, little droplets splashed slowly away from it in all directions. There was a howling wail and the droplets floating in the air started to rejoin their parent. The first droplet was greedily ingested, followed by a second. Each droplet entered in the same area causing the sphere to spin slowly. It built up speed as more droplets rejoined until the contents of the sphere whirled and sparked together.
         Halmonth noticed movement from the corner of his eye, another sphere was slowly gravitating towards the spinning ball in the centre of his room, he scanned the whole room, all the floating spheres were congregating on the central one. His whole room looked like the inside of a lava lamp with blobs of energy bobbing within it.
         A sphere with a blue, sad colour merged with the larger one, its contents were sucked inside the spinning ball, quickly mixed and absorbed. As the spheres joined they added their volume causing the large sphere to grow in size and power. Sparks flew from it as it gyrated faster and faster sucking up the remaining spheres. The last one joined its grander brother.
         The pregnant sphere floated above the floor, revolving madly, its weight seemed to draw Halmonth towards it and he had to cling on to the leg of the oak table to stop himself leaning in. The sparks inside the sphere concentrated to a central light deep within its body and crackled there for a few seconds. There was a twitch on its surface and a crack of lightning split the air of the caravan and streaked towards the prone, smoking figure of Marken. The jagged shaft of electricity connected to Marken’s aura and spread over its surface biting into it. The line between Marken and sphere formed a skin and quickly developed into a larger version of one of the strands that had bound the two psychics earlier.
         His mother of pearl hue bled into the strand and was slowly fed back across to the sphere. Instead of mixing with the contents the colour drew lines across the skin of the globe, splitting it into sections. These sections contained moving particles and reminded Halmonth of a living cell. There was a crack and the strand instantly dried and collapsed to the floor. Marken corpse was no longer a shimmering thing of beauty, with its aura gone; it was nothing more than a mummified shell.
         The lines of the spheres sections shone briefly and then became dull. The noise wound down and stopped, leaving Halmonth believing he was deaf. The silence scared him more than the noise ever did; it carried the threat of unfinished business.
          Looking around at the devastation that surrounded him he noticed all the auras were vague and faint as though the sphere had robbed them of their vitality. His new found power still worked, he could still read the auras but it was if they were running on backup power, just ticking over.
         The sphere was unreadable, he didn’t have a clue what its purpose was or how he was to interact with it. Could it be the way a psychic’s soul was transported to the afterlife, no doubt their souls were different to other mortals; perhaps he was even looking at Marken’s soul. It was disconcerting, was it the very essence of a human being that floated before him? He reached out towards the globe; maybe if he touched it physically he could then read it. He was within touching distance when he realised he was using his damaged hand and he felt the raw lines of his flesh ache as he made contact.
         He jerked his hand back with a wince. Halmonth's common sense warned him that if the hand was used once for a terrible transference it could be used again. A vision of being connected to the sphere through the threads that had connected him to Marken flashed across his mind. The thought didn’t stay long enough to panic him; it was interrupted by the spheres lines taking the same bloody redness that lay upon his hand. The hue travelled down the lines giving the appearance that the globe was threaded by veins. Halmonth knew that in a few seconds time they would start to beat and pulse in time with a hidden heart.
         He was wrong.
         The sphere juddered and twisted along the lines. Propelled by a concealed force it began to unfurl like a deadly bloom. Five segments stretched away from the main section which smoothed and flattened itself. The segments themselves were bent and when they moved they cracked and popped. The noise was familiar to Halmonth but in his dazed state it took him a few seconds to make the connection. The pit of his stomach crept up to his chest as he realised it was the sound of knuckles flexing; he was seeing a gigantic hand form in front of him. It flexed and stretched its newly formed fingers, using the same motion a butterfly does as it emerges from its chrysalis to dry its wings. As it squirmed its shape became more defined, its outline became focused. Halmonth recoiled in revulsion as he thought he saw the hand covered in maggots, it wasn't. Squinting hard he recognised the shapes that squirmed on its skin. Small fingers made up the surface of the hand. They were sporadic, covering its skin in clusters, sometimes in groups of two but there were as many as twenty jutting out in some places.
         The covering fingers waved and danced slowly to an unknown current, most of them were of a normal size but Halmonth (who was as close to insanity as he could get) noticed one or two with more than six joints. The numerous fingers joined together near the end of their gigantic counterparts and changed texture, hardening into bony hooks.
         Fully formed the hand hung in the air and for all the horror it inspired in Halmonth he couldn’t help feeling in awe of the monstrosity. He was now certain that this was the process for psychics to be transported to the after life. He expected the hand to float down and gently pick up the remains of Marken and then when cradling him fade out of existence.
         Once again he was wrong.
         The hand fell. It didn’t fall with grace; instead it spun clumsily and landed on its back with a thud that shook the whole caravan. The few ornaments and photos that had remained upright in the struggle between him and Marken were felled by the seismic wave. It lay there with its huge fingers slowly bicycling; one claw lay against a cabinet and lazily gouged a groove into it as the finger rocked to and fro. The motion of the hand was hypnotic and Halmonth found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the sight.
         Then the hand jerked stiffly as though someone had gotten hold of its reins and gave them a directing tug. The knuckles started to hammer against the floor simultaneously thrusting the palm upwards. The action of the hand was so violent that the caravan started to rock in time with the tempo of the thrusts. With one almighty crash the knuckles and fingers smashed into the floor splintering and cracking the laminate flooring. The power of the blow had sent the hand waist high into the air. At the pinnacle of its height it deftly and lithely spun around so that the palm was now facing downwards and landed on the tips of its deadly looking nails.
         Like a spider it squatted there, poised on sprung digits. Halmonth noted that some of the small fingers that made the hand up had been broken. Some twisted off at unnatural angles; others just hung there limply swinging. A batch of them, placed just above the knuckles, slowly clawed the air reminding Halmonth of an insect’s antenna. The hand started to turn on its fingertips, each bony nail tapped on the hard floor as it rotated towards Marken. When it faced his position it stopped and the antenna like fingers stiffened. The whole hand seemed to pause in its movement and began to slowly rock from digit to digit as if indecisive on what to do next.
         The palm lowered and then sprang towards Marken its fingers pumping. The wood flooring denied it purchase and the bony tipped fingers tacked and ticked as they comically whirled under the hand. It slowly closed the distance. Its digits flew underneath and looking as if it was trapped on an oil slick the palm slewed left and right closer towards Marken. One of the vicious hooks snagged on the rug which finally gave it the traction it needed. Having one finger on the rug and the rest skittering away underneath it nearly unbalanced the hand, but it righted itself and used the snagged finger to pull the others onto the rug.
         A giant finger was planted next to Halmonth's leg and he could feel the sheer weight of it warping the boards underneath him. The hand emitted a smell of freshly slaughtered meat and a heat so intense that he could feel it through the material of his trousers.
         The floor trembled as the hand leapt into the air and with its fingers wide open landed on Marken. Halmonth heard Marken bones crack under the mass of the hand and thought the floor was about to give way. On top of the corpse the hand began to close, scooping the dead, splayed limbs of Marken and squeezing them tight with a wet, grinding noise. From between the rapidly closing fingers there came a pop and a rush of steaming entrails spilled out. Then a hollow crack which Halmonth knew was Marken’s skull giving way under the pressure. The fingers stopped contracting and the caravan was filled by a muted silence which was interrupted by the drips of blood splashing from the clenched hand and the smell of shit from Marken spilt guts.          The hand was still, motionlessly encasing him. Halmonth lay there panting with fear and awe of this alien shape in front of him. An idea flashed through his mind, what if the rest of this hands owner came looking for it, came looking for him?
That thought terrified him and he made the decision to run, to get the hell out of dodge. The notion of having riches beyond belief and having an ability that almost nobody else had didn't appeal half as much as getting away with his life and body intact after this nights horrific events.
         His legs rebelled against him and would not obey his command to get up and run, so he did the next best thing and aided by his arms, shuffled backwards on his ass. He had hardly gone any distance when two of the smaller fingers placed on the back of the hand popped and grew an extra joint. Halmonth stopped transfixed by the bizarre nature of the scene. The fingers wiggled and pointed further away from the hand, another wet pop and another joint appeared. This process continued until the fingers were of at least twenty joints in length. The fingers resembled long, flexible, fleshy bamboo canes. They began to whip around the room swishing and slicing the air in a rotary motion, building up speed they started to blur. Their direction changed in a millisecond and with a sickening squelch plunged into the corpse of Marken driving deep into it.
         The aura of the hand began to crackle and spark and the lines that defined its shape started to glow. A light red shone out at first and then followed by a deeper more intense bloody scarlet. Halmonth was at least five feet away from the corpse cocooned by the hand but he could feel that the heat coming off it was beginning to rise with the change in its colour. It was no slow building up of heat; this was a quick, intense ascent of temperature. A wave of rough heat hit him, he felt as though he was next to an oven and someone had opened the door.
         He had to move and this time his legs did not disobey him, in fact they complied with gusto, levering him up and away from the scorching hand. Facing the hand he backed away in the direction of the main door. One step, he saw the surrounding rug beginning to catch the heat and smoulder. Two steps, the heat increased so quickly the rug started to flare up and the corpse of Marken began to sizzle. Three steps, thick black smoke rose from Marken and the floor accompanied by flashes of flames. Four steps, he jarred to a stop as his back hit the door frame.
         He was stopped from spinning around and running out of the door by an action from the hand. It was now jetting small flames from every crack and fold of its skin and the heat coming from it was almost too much for Halmonth to bear, his eyes stung and his face felt sunburnt. The hand clenched down even more about Marken’s corpse until it started to shake with the effort. Some instinct told Halmonth to drop to the floor, this action saved his life. As he fell the pressure from the hand completed its job and Marken exploded from its grasp in pieces of flame sodden flesh. Where Halmonth had stood a half cooked limb smashed its way through the door leaving a flame coated hole.
         Halmonth got up from the floor as quick as a cat chased by an angry dog. What was left of his home was punctured by gaping, flaming holes; it looked as though his caravan had been assaulted by a giant shotgun. There were holes where holes shouldn’t be, his cooker had been penetrated and his fire place was one ragged cavity, surely pieces of flesh couldn’t do so much damage?
         No time to sit there wondering he had to get out before he met the same fiery fate as Marken. The hand hadn’t moved, it lay there a fiery, five fingered furnace. Halmonth wasn’t going to chance it, he didn’t want those fingers clasping around him. He pulled the main doors handle, it didn’t move. He was in no mood to stay in the same room as that monstrosity and put his shoulder to the door. The door split in half along the line where Marken’s limb had shot through, like a cowboy being ejected from a saloon Halmonth fell out of the top half and into the fresher air outside. He went over the steps and hit the ground awkwardly with his shoulder. The side of his face punched into the dirt as he somersaulted with legs splayed in the air continuing until his butt walloped the earth with a meaty thud. He got up quickly wincing at the pain in his shoulder and hopped around clasping his damaged ass. His shadow caste a comical scene, he looked in silhouette like an Indian dancing around a bonfire, instead of the Indians whoop he just lurched around shouting Christ several times until the spectacle of his crushed home stopped him.
         One end of the caravan that contained his main room was aflame, the opposite end had been punctured several times by Marken’s body parts, from the holes came an orange flickering glow as though a disco was being held in there. Halmonth tenderly took steps away form the caravan. Its heat made it impossible to stand to close to it. Through the half broken door Halmonth could see the hand shining through the smoke like a beacon. It started to unfurl its clasped stance, relaxing those mighty fingers and started to wink out of existence, seconds later it was gone.
         His new found sense kicked in and told him that people where approaching. He could not see them but he could taste their auras and feel the anxiety in them. There were going to be questions asked, Halmonth was almost sure he could fool them with a gas explosion story to cover the truth. But what was he going to do with his gift.
         He accepted that he hadn’t been given a gift after all but a prison one whose containment is much stronger that physical bars, by accepting the power Halmonth thought he could gain control over his life and through the power gain control of others. Now he could see that he is no more than a glorified servant trapped doing a service that is alien to his personality, having to help people, to herd the sheep into their pens.
         Unminding of the pain in his behind he sat down and watched his caravan burn to the ground. A thought brings laughter into Halmonth's sombre mood. He has been fooled into accepting a job, a job that if not performed correctly would serve him up one hell of a retirement package. Concerned voices broke his trance. He shuffled around and summoning the energy to stand up pointed himself toward them. Time to try out his new toy.