“Why don’t you tell me? Is it so obvious?”
“Well, I think it is,” I shrugged as I spoke. “I’m afraid of Porter.”
“Are you really?”
Again, I raised an eyebrow and regarded her silently for a moment. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of him. I mean, the bastard is out to kill me, and he doesn’t seem interested in giving up on the idea.”
“I am not so certain that you are being honest with yourself, Rowan.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.”
She drew her lips into a thin frown for a moment, her expression telling me that she was obviously in search of the words to express what was on her mind. It didn’t take her long to track them down.
“As I recall, you are the man who purposely drove a van through a set of plate glass windows, climbed injured from the wrecked vehicle, and then headed straight into a situation where you could have been ambushed by a killer.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It does not sound like the action of a fearful man to me.”
“No,” I agreed. “It was the action of a desperate man. The son-of-a-bitch had kidnapped my wife.”
“All right, perhaps that was not the best example for you. How about this…Do you remember a conversation we had a few weeks ago, Rowan, when I asked you why you had chased Eldon Porter out onto that bridge by yourself instead of immediately calling the police?”
“You mean the conversation where you refused to tell me why YOU thought I did it?” I asked with good- natured sarcasm in my voice. “Vaguely.”
Helen smiled back at me. “You have been thinking about it then.”
“You could say that.”
“Have you reached any conclusions?”
“You mean other than the fact that it was a stupid move on my part?”
“I would not necessarily call it a stupid move, Rowan. You were ill prepared, perhaps, but not stupid. That is, however, a matter of opinion.”
“I’d have to say that you are in the minority with that opinion,” I told her.
“Be that as it may, you still have not answered my question.”
I huffed out a breath and brought my cigar up to my lips but hesitated without taking a puff. Instead, I watched the feathery snow as it threw itself against the ground in gathering clumps, quickly overcoming the landscape with its whiteness.
“I’ve heard a rumor that I did it because I have a ‘heroing complex’ and that I’m suicidal,” I finally responded.
“That would be a pseudo-scientific term coined by an amateur psychiatrist, I assume?”
“You tell me. You’re the one with the sheepskin.”
“Let me ask you this. When you have placed yourself in harm’s way, have you done so in order to seek glory and recognition?”
“No.”
“Do you want to die?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then, were I you, I would ignore that diagnosis.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Good. Now, you are still not answering my question, Rowan,” she pressed with gentle firmness. “What I want to know are the conclusions YOU have reached about why you did it.”
“I’m not sure that I have, Helen,” I told her then took a long drag on the cigar and rolled the smoke around in my mouth. I still wasn’t enjoying it.
She sighed heavily and then joined me in silently watching the forming snowscape. This sudden inconsistency in her otherwise calm demeanor was probably the closest to impatience I’d ever seen in her. Still, her annoyance didn’t seem to be directly with me although I am sure I played some role in it. What I felt from her was that she was struggling with a decision that on an everyday basis she would have easily snubbed out of principle. After a full measure of heartbeats, she spoke again.
“The situation you currently face has placed an unfair imperative upon you, Rowan. Normally, I would feel it best to continue guiding you along your path until you reach a logical resolution. However, I fear that in this case I may need to take a more active role, and because of these extraordinary circumstances, I am going to break one of my own rules.”
“You’re going to tell me I’m a fruitcake?” I looked back at her with a smile as I cracked the joke.
She ignored my thin attempt at levity and locked her eyes with mine in a coldly serious gaze. “You are not afraid of Eldon Porter, Rowan. You are afraid of yourself.”
CHAPTER 13:
I blinked.
I thought about what she had just said, and then I blinked again.
“I’m afraid of myself?” I repeated the comment back to her as a question.
“Yes, Rowan. You fear yourself. You harbor a deep-seated fear of the things you are capable of doing.”
“You mean the nightmares? The channeling? That stuff?”
“That is a part of it, yes,” she explained. “But in reality, those are simply talents you possess which fuel your turmoil.”
“I’ll admit the nightmares tend to be pretty scary, but…”
“No, Rowan,” she interrupted. “Open your eyes and see beyond the surface. You recently told me that you felt as though you were on the inside looking out but could see only darkness, did you not?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I remember something like that, and as I recall, you told me to use that darkness as a mirror.”
“Yes.” She smiled and gave me a curt nod to the affirmative. “Now what I want you to do is look into the reflection, not merely at it. For you, understanding lies within the depths of the image.”
I tilted my head forward and removed my glasses then rubbed my eyes for a moment before sliding the spectacles back onto my face and returning my gaze to her. “Helen, your wisdom is starting to sound like the mystical advice of a little, green swamp creature from the sci-fi movies we all know and love.”
“Really? I rather saw myself more as a drifting Shao-Lin monk.” She allowed herself a small chuckle as she made the reference to the old television show.
I continued with the theme. “So, should I pluck the pebble from your hand now?”
She returned a brief smile then in almost the same instant fixed me with a hardcore seriousness in her eyes as she gazed at my face.
“Levity aside, Rowan, you should heed what I am telling you, for I cannot give you the full answer. With only a very few exceptions, I can merely guide you. In this case, guiding has become a bit of a shove, yes, but I dare not do anything more lest you lose sight of that which you need to see.”
“So, what you are saying is that I still have to learn the lesson the hard way.”
“If you are to learn it and not simply hear it, yes.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I’ll buy that. But what if I’ve already learned the lesson, and you just think I haven’t?”
“All right, then.” She looked back at me with an even gaze. “Enlighten me, Rowan.”
I blurted out my conclusion, “You think I’m afraid that I might be capable of killing Eldon Porter.”
“Do I?”
I halfway expected her non-committal response. “Yes.”
“Then I believe you have missed my point entirely.”
My overblown confidence in the statement was immediately deflated. “Excuse me?”
She shook her head. “Like I have told you before, Rowan, it is not about what I think. It is what YOU think that is important.”
