Chapter 66: Sharing a Gift

Suddenly another memory from her grandmother appeared in Tamara’s mind. It was a recollection of how the elder Tamara had kept Vanessa from touching her. Vanessa’s journal had mentioned a “gray cloud” which had prevented her from touching her grandmother, and now Tamara could see, with her grandmother’s memory, just how that worked.

She yelled at the man, “Stay away!” and began to run toward the circle drive campus entrance where she had arranged to meet Peter. While she ran, she felt her mind prepare for a possible encounter with the man, who had started to chase after her. Then Tamara noticed that the other man was moving to intercept her, so she began angling away from him.

The closer man had glanced around, checking for any witnesses, before he started to chase after her. He was surprised at how fast she was running, but Tamara’s winter coat and backpack were slowing her down enough that he was able to close the distance between them.

He shouted at her as he got closer, “Got you, stupid bitch, you can’t get away, gonna have some fun,” and reached for her as she yelled at him again to stay away and then shouted for help.

As the man caught up to Tamara, she felt him reach for her and dodged to avoid him as he lunged and missed. Then she stopped and turned toward him, releasing her “gray cloud,” as he moved to grab her. That didn’t need eye contact.

“What the fuck?” he exclaimed as his grab missed her.

As she “pushed” the “gray cloud,” she suddenly realized that it was just a more powerful version of her “making herself little” projection, so she used that new knowledge to try to strengthen its effect. Then she noticed that the second man was warily circling around her; he seemed to be puzzled about his partner’s inability to grab her. And out of the corner of her eye, Tamara saw someone running, coming from the direction of the campus entrance. She realized that it must be Peter because the figure was running hard toward her.

Either Peter heard me yell or got an alert from a lwa, the thought occurred to Tamara, as she kept dodging while using the “grey cloud” to keep confounding her assailant.

He was trying to grab her, cursing at her, and couldn’t understand why she was never where he grabbed.

Tamara called to Peter, “Watch it, there’s another guy! Get him first! I got this one!” and he called back, “I see him!” and ran toward the second guy.

“What the fuck, bitch!” her attacker growled at her, “you think you got me?” and grabbed at her again.

But again she wasn’t where he thought and stumbled when he missed her. Tamara still wasn’t able to catch his eye, but she had managed to work a little confusion emotion into her “gray cloud.”

The second assailant, who had been trying to figure out his companion’s strange behavior but who also had been slightly affected by Tamara’s confusion “push,” was alerted by Peter’s shout. He turned to face Peter as Peter approached him, looking for an offensive opening—he had only practiced defensive moves. But when the man tried to throw a punch at him, Peter had that particular defensive move down pat and used a hip throw to put his assailant on the ground, hard. He had been getting plenty of practice with his hip throw. With one down and apparently unconscious, Peter turned to the guy who was trying to grab Tamara. That one was so intent on trying to grab her that he didn’t see Peter coming from behind him—Tamara’s confusion projection had finally worked on him and the man was now flailing at her in frustration. Peter grabbed him in a hammer lock and forced him to the ground, face down.

That’s when Peter’s first victim struggled to his feet and pulled out a pistol, staring angrily at Tamara.

“Now I’m gonna take care of both of you shits for that! Let go of my buddy there, you fucker. We’re gonna teach you both ... ugh...”

He gurgled and dropped to the ground, the pistol falling out of his hand.

“What happened, Tamara? You did that?” Peter panted.

“Yeah. It worked. Remember that time in the MRI when I tried that one ‘push’ on you—you lost muscle control?”

“Right. You did that now? That’s crazy; damn, you’re dangerous, you know?”

Tamara chuckled ruefully as she went over to the dropped pistol and picked up, holding its grip using a scarf that had been tied to the side of her backpack.

“You are too with your judo moves. Here, take his gun and get up off that jerk. Hey, jerk,” she called to the man Peter was holding down, “we have your buddy’s gun here, so just stay put. If you move, you might get shot somewhere important.”

Peter grabbed the pistol, holding it by the scarf on the grip, and got up as Tamara called 911. The guy, hearing her making the call, tried to get up but she caught his eye and “pushed” a dose of her yellow-brown with black-tinted edges taste at him. He yelped and went limp too.

It took almost five minutes for the campus police to arrive, but Tamara’s report of a gun also brought two units of the Baltimore police. When Peter saw the police cars’ flashing lights pulling into the nearby circle drive, he laid the pistol on the ground about ten feet away from the two men and went to Tamara, who was carefully watching the men on the ground. Then, as the first of the officers came running up, Tamara “pushed” a small amount of the silver taste of recovery at the men on the ground and when they began to try to sit up, she “pushed” the greenish-gray taste of compulsion at the closest one and whispered a suggestion to him. As the first officer came within view, she moved away from him.

“Police! Don’t move! Put your hands out where I can see them!” the officer ordered, pointing his pistol in their direction.

Tamara called, “Those two on the ground tried to attack me, but my friend here stopped them. They had a gun. It got dropped over there,” she pointed.

Several other officers were now running up to the scene and one went to collect the pistol while the second began cuffing the two men, who were still somewhat dazed.

“You took on an armed perp?” the first officer asked Peter when he confirmed that the men were secured. “What happened that they look so out of it, anyway?”

Peter answered, “I know judo and took one of them down hard and Tamara was able to trip the other one when he tied to grab her.”

Tamara continued, “I was able to stay away from that other one till Peter got to him; that’s when he started to pull the gun out, but Peter was able to throw him first and that’s when he must have dropped it. I guess they both kinda got knocked out ‘cause they didn’t move till you got here.”

Peter looked at Tamara and shook his head with wonder.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened,” Peter confirmed. “We both worked late tonight in different buildings and we planned to meet here, but as I was getting close, I heard her call for help. So I ran over here as fast as I could and saw those jerks chasing her. I stopped the first one and the other one came for me so I threw him too. I didn’t see the gun until it fell on the ground. We kicked it away from where they fell.”

It was 1 am before Tamara and Peter got back to their apartment, where they both crashed.

And at 8 in the morning, the intercom buzzed; it was a Baltimore detective and he wanted to question them. Peter buzzed him in and soon he was knocking at their door.

“I’m Lieutenant Davis,” he introduced himself, giving Peter his card. “I’m here about the attack on you last night. The complaint number is on the card. I’ve got some questions for you both and a transcription of your oral statement from last night for you both to sign.”

“Okay. Tamara told me that they told her they were gonna rape her,” Peter replied.

“Yeah, the one guy didn’t say it outright but that was the impression I got from what he said to me. I don’t recall his exact words. So is this attempted assault?” Tamara asked.

“Actually it’s lots more,” the detective said. “One of the perps confessed and ratted out his friend. Very strange; he just opened up like a floodgate. You probably won’t be needed at their trials because he gave us enough details and physical evidence to charge them with several rapes. Here are the transcripts for you to sign—please read them over to be sure they’re accurate. And I have a few questions to clarify parts of your statements.”

He asked the questions and their responses were noted on the transcripts, Then he thanked them and left, after requesting that they not share the details of the assault with others to avoid problems should their assault case come to trial.

When he left, Peter turned to Tamara. “Okay, about last night. We were too tired to discuss what happened. What the hell did you do to those guys, anyway?”

“Thanks for coming to my aid, sweetie. You know, a few days ago, I was thinking about how I seem to have become a magnet for evil people and I don’t like it. So what happened? I’m sure I was guided to go that way—tell you more about that in a sec. But when I saw that guy—then saw the second one, a memory I got from my grandma popped into my mind. It was something that she did with Vanessa. Remember, I told you about what happened to her in Haiti years before Dad met Mom.”

“Sure, I remember that.”

“Grandma had some awesome abilities, like mine in some ways but different in others. When her spirit was in my head—remember that story?—I was left with some of her memories that can appear when I need that knowledge. So she had a way of keeping someone from touching her. It’s like when I ‘push’ a confusion emotion, but a little different. So I used that new ability, or whatever it was, on the guy chasing me. That’s when I realized that doing that was like when I’d make myself ‘small,’ but this version is stronger somehow. The other thing I did, when the other jerk pulled out the gun, was what I tried with you when you were doing the MRI plus EEG test. Your muscles went limp?”

“Oh yeah. Ugh. You used that on him?”

“Yep. He was close enough so that it worked, but it needs eye contact somehow, so I couldn’t try it with the shit who was chasing me. Not sure about how it works, though, but unless I get eye-to-eye contact, nothing happens. But I saw what happened in your brain from the scan we did when I ‘pushed’ that one to you. I can’t tell anything about how the activation pathways in the brain worked when I did that, but what happened in your brain was that your whole motor cortex lit up. It fired so many of the neurons there that they overloaded and stopped working. That resulted in the loss of muscle tone in your voluntary muscles—mainly the arms and legs.”

“Okay ... but why did it hurt like that?”

“The motor cortex is immediately adjacent to the sensory cortex and parts of that area were also lit up—must have been a collateral or overflow effect. The neuron overload in the sensory cortex must have triggered a generalized pain sensation. You said that you didn’t know where the pain came from, right?”

“Yeah. Jeez, honey, that’s dangerous, you know?”

“Oh, I do. Granmanman could do a lot of things herself that could be nasty, but she never used any for evil. And I won’t, myself.”

“Thank goodness,” Peter sighed. “I wonder why that stuff keeps happening to you, though.”

“Maybe the ‘dream’ that wasn’t a dream I had last night had an answer, honey,” Tamara told him. “My memories of the dream are really jumbled so I don’t recall anything specific, but my impression is that ... I think it was Ayizan and also Erzulie Mansur, who led me to go on that path past the museum. It was dark there and it wasn’t the direct route to meet you. I usually avoid trouble by not going into bad situations, but somehow I was urged to take that path. Say, how did you know I was in trouble and was on that particular path, anyway?”

Peter stopped to think. “Damn, I don’t—shit, you know? I started running there before I heard you call. That’s crazy! Yeah, I got a sense of foreboding and I wanted to get to you as soon as I could.”

“Peter, you see? The lwa really are influencing you and you’re becoming more sensitive to receiving their, ah, messages. It took Dad more than twenty years to learn that.”

“I guess that I can see it ... but shit, Tamara, I don’t wanna become an anti-crime vigilante—and I don’t want you to do it either. This is dangerous shit, darling. Why do you think that the spirits are pushing you into danger like that?”

“Excellent question. Remember, I told you that I think that the lwa are a reflection of one’s nature in a lot of important ways. So there must be something in my own psyche that’s making this happen. I’ll need to meditate on this and ask for the lwas’ help to understand it.”

“Okay, but I told you what I think. Please let the lwa know my opinion,” he joked.

“Ha ha. If what I believe is true, you’ll need to convince yourself that you don’t wanna be a vigilante. Hey, I need to get moving; my class is in 45 minutes.”

During the rest of the week, Tamara visited some of the volunteers’ trials of her possible pheromones with the subjects that the med school had recruited. While the subject was seated in the MRI, at the appropriate moment during a scan, they were told to crush a small gelatin capsule, which contained a small piece of filter paper on which a tiny amount of the chemical, together with a very small amount of methyl salicylate, or oil of wintergreen, had been deposited. The scented oil was there to confirm that the capsule had been broken. Then the subject was to inhale the scent through their nose. The chemical chosen was the one associated with thirst.

Dr Jose Marcos, the radiologist for the project, was in the control room during the session when Tamara arrived. Joyce Darner, her biochemistry collaborator, was present too. They were reviewing some scans when Tamara came in.

Darner looked up at her as she closed the door. “Tamara, Jose’s shown me that the chemical gets some kind of response, but it’s not like the responses from the scans you ran out at the APL when you were in the magnet room.”

“Oh, really? Let me see what you mean.”

Tamara looked at the last scan that they had done.

“See here,” Marcos said, pointing, “this was a second after the capsule was crushed; see how the sections of the olfactory tract light up? Then we see the neurons in the pathways to the midbrain light as their potential changes. Those neural pathways lead up to the cortex as the APL scans show, but then the activity dies out rapidly.”

“I see,” Tamara said. “How about any somatic effect? Did the subjects experience thirst?”

“Actually they did, but it wasn’t a very strong effect,” Marcos replied.

“Yeah, about that,” Darner commented, “I used an isolation hood to contain the chemicals while I worked with them. I used the containment unit to set up the capsules, too. But even though that’s a totally closed system, enough of the molecules must have escaped that I felt thirst whenever I handled the apparatus. Not strong, but it was there.”

“I wonder if we need a positive control, then,” Tamara remarked. “You already ran some negative ones, with only the methyl salicylate present. I don’t have the isolation tent anymore. What if I try wearing an isolation gown with a full face respirator when I’m in the room with a subject? The hospital has that kind of gear, right?”

“I’m sure they do,” Marcos answered. “It’s almost lunch time and we have four subjects coming this afternoon. Can you come back then? I’ll see about rounding up the gown and mask.”