The Seer by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 17

Without answers, Gordon found himself continually distracted, and was, again, having difficulty concentrating. He was becoming stressed by uncertainty to the point of losing sleep, and in his profession, a keen mind is a productive mind. It was while he was on the way home from his office that Gordon witnessed a tracker trailer jack-knife into a car on I-95. It's wheels, worn smooth from months of contact with the pavement, slid on a slight turn. The resulting impact sent the car flying into the guard rail, crushing it into half its width. The road was peppered with glass, while disconnected pieces of twisted metal lay strewn on both sides of the guard rail. Traffic was blocked for miles as rescue crews pulled the intermingled vehicles apart. Gordon sat nearly sixty feet from the scene and watched as a large heavy tarp was thrown over the mangled car. The only time he had seen death up close was in medical school, but that was different, as well as expected.

Seeing the results of a chance encounter with mortality brought Gordon back to the cemetery in Sanford, where he stood surrounded by the alleged dead. A lack of sleep left him tired and bleary-eyed, and as his mind began to drift off, Gordon leaned over, resting his head on the wheel. It would be at least an hour before the highway was cleared, but just as Gordon began to doze, he was suddenly awakened by a knock on the driver's window. He quickly raised his head while taking a deep breath, and looking off to the side of his car, saw a small girl with tears streaming down her face. She was dressed plainly, clad in loose fitting jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt. It was the tears that pulled at Gordon's sense of compassion, prompting him to offer her help. With his mind not yet cleared of the need to sleep, he rolled down the window and spoke to the girl in a soothing tone. There was some small part of him, unaffected by exhaustion that suspected something irrational. Something about the girl's presence didn't make sense. Perhaps, it was the fact that she was there at all.

“What are you doing out here, sweetheart? It's not safe,” he said.

Her expression turned to profound sadness as she looked at him with desperate eyes.

“I'm lost. Have you seen my mommy?” Gordon became as fearful as he was suspicious. What was a little girl doing on a highway blocked by a fatal car accident? He looked closely up the line of traffic to see paramedics loading one of the victims into an ambulance. The patient was a young girl, and in spite of the tubes, wires, breathing mask and bandages, Gordon was startled to see that it was the same girl who stood next to his car, weeping for her mother. He looked back at her as she continued crying with a look of terror on his face. This time, Gordon managed to temper his fear with compassion. He still believed that what he was seeing couldn't possibly be real, but a slight degree of doubt had crept into his mind, and although he was not aware of it, that one sliver of doubt began to pose a question. 'Could this be real?'

“I don't think I can help you,” Gordon replied. His tone was gentle and kind, but his face reflected something very different. In spite of his experience in the cemetery at Sanford, he still felt that what he was seeing was a fiction, created by a physiological flaw that had, thus far, gone undetected.

As the young girl began to break down, both she and Gordon were surprised by another voice.

“Katie!”

Coming from the accident scene ran a woman in her early thirties. He clothes were unruffled, and she wore he auburn hair down to the middle of her back. “Mommy!” the girl cried.

Running to the woman, she threw her arms around her.

“C'mon sweetie,” the woman began. “We have to go.” Taking the woman's hand, she looked up and asked,

“Where are we going?”

The woman looked down at her with a gentle expression.

“We're going home.”

The little girl's face brightened and turning back, she smiled at Gordon, waving enthusiastically. Gordon hesitantly brought up an open hand, but as an uncomfortable smile began to work its way across his face, the little girl, as well as the woman who led her, vanished into the late afternoon air. Staring at the very spot they had disappeared, Gordon's terrified mind ignited a flurry of adrenaline. It surged through his body and coursed through his blood, sending his breathing into a frenzy. His emotions quickly peaked, and looking at the standstill traffic around him, Gordon began to feel trapped.

The highway was still blocked off as wreckage was being cleared, and the line of traffic behind him seemed to go on for miles. Some turned their vehicles around, and Gordon saw an opportunity. Seeing an opening in the line of traffic, he turned hard to the left, and driving on the shoulder near the guard rail, Gordon sped to the nearest turnaround and into the opposing side of the highway. Entering the nearest lane, he drove to the next off-ramp, turned around and bypassed the accident scene. Getting back on I-95, Gordon sped home and immediately called his psychiatrist, who, without hesitation, agreed to see him that evening.