Chapter 2

I watched the tall, skinny, red haired kid race up the stairs inside his house, slam the door of his attic room shut behind him and look frantically around. I could feel waves of fear and confusion radiating from him. The feelings he emitted weren't very strong, but they were intense and highly concentrated.

It was bizarre, the way the three of us were able to follow along after him, walls fading away before us so that we never lost sight of the boy, not even for an instant.

"What's he doing now?" I asked no one in particular.

'Looking for a place to hide.' the pale figure on my right answered.

"Why?"

'He's afraid. Of what happened, of what might happen ... wouldn't you be?'

"Who were the men he was hunting with?"

'The old man is his grandfather; the other two are his father and brother.'

"They don't act much like the way I would expect a father and brother to." I said, watching the boy crawl into the closet and begin throwing things out behind him.

'No. They never did. That has a lot to do with what happens later.'

Eventually things stopped being tossed out of the closet and the sliding doors were shut from inside.

Time began flowing faster and faster. Shadows lengthened and faded into darkness and the boy remained inside the closet. Night came and went, with no sign of the boy. Morning arrived and there was still no movement. Time passed faster around us. Morning turned to afternoon and the boy finally emerged, quietly, cautiously. There was less confusion, but the fear remained, accompanied by self loathing. He crept out of his room and snuck down to the second floor bathroom. The house was empty. A few minutes later he left the bathroom and returned to the closet. The afternoon passed into evening then night and then morning. As afternoon approached he emerged once again and repeated his activities from the previous day.

"How long does this go on?" I asked.

'Not much longer. Tonight he'll get tired of sleeping in the closet and decide to use the bed. In the morning ... well, you'll see.'

As the afternoon became evening, just as the bright figure had said, the boy crawled out of the closet and into the bed, pulling the sheets and blankets up to cover himself completely. The night passed with the flurry of speeded up time that I was beginning to get used to and then as dawn's light began to creep in thru the closed drapes it returned to normal.

The boy was still buried beneath his mound of bedclothes, unmoving. There came a rapping on the outside of the door. The unruly mass of dark red hair popped out from under the sheets and blankets and his pale eyes focused on the door with a fierce look of concentration.

It was an odd sensation, but strangely familiar. I could sense him reaching out towards whoever was on the other side of the door, trying to do with whomever it was the same thing he'd done days before with the deer. He was trying to make a connection of some kind. After several long seconds of trying and not succeeding, his head sagged back against a pillow and his body relaxed.

"Who is it?" he called out, seemingly uninterested.

"It's Izzy. Can I come in?"

The boy dragged himself out of bed, unlocked the door and then turned and dove back under the blankets.

The door opened just a little ways and a very pretty teenaged girl stuck her head and shoulders part way thru. The dark figure standing on my left heated up fractionally; it felt like sunlight shining on the side of my face. Now wasn't that interesting.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked gently, watching the boy pulling the bedclothes up over his head.

"What do you want?" he snapped from beneath the pile of sheets and blankets.

I could feel his curiosity and wariness growing. My heart started beating just a little faster and harder in my chest.

"You've been hiding in here for days now, and I'm worried about you. Is that so odd?"

He poked his head out and locked eyes with the girl. He didn't say a word, simply stared, and after fifteen seconds the young woman blinked and looked away.

She sighed quietly, then opened the door and stepped inside. I think she was waiting for him to tell her to get lost, but when he didn't she shut the door behind her, walked over and stood beside the bed.

She was an impressive specimen, this Izzy. Tall, graceful, exotically beautiful facial features, long well muscled legs, hips that flared out just enough from her narrow waist to confirm that this was most definitely a woman. Her shoulders were a little on the broad side, making her breasts appear smaller than they probably were. She moved with athletic control and smoothness, striding rather than walking.

"Look, I know I haven't been very nice to you in the past. I've been a rotten sister, and I'm probably a rotten person. But you're my little brother and I do love you and right now I am worried about you."

"Why? Why now?" The head of hair popped out from beneath the blankets again. He was most definitely pissed. I felt his indignant anger cresting. I also felt, deep down inside the boy, a long suppressed pool of emotion. Locked down hard and fast, and buried so far below everything else that he wasn't even aware it existed. But her proximity and his confused emotional state combined to weaken the barriers he'd erected.

" ... where the fuck was my caring, loving older sister then!?" he snapped.

"She's his sister?" I asked the bright figure. The dark one on my left had been unusually silent so far, so I assumed that the lighter one was going to be my tour guide thru whatever this show was supposed to accomplish.

'Yes. Isabeau is her name. She's four years older than he is, and a year younger than their older brother Ivan.'

"Did she really do all those things he said she did?"

'Yes, I'm afraid she did. And more.'

"Why?"

'She doesn't like her little brother. Never has.'

The girl, Isabeau, seemed to collapse like a puppet whose strings had been cut and dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed. Her shoulders shuddered and her breathing got ragged and gasping.

"I'm ... so ... sorry." she cried.

Something inside the boy snapped. He became enraged. I could feel the heat in him building, along with concentrated feelings of mistrust and doubt.

And then he made the connection he'd been trying for earlier. I don't think he was trying this time, but he did it, quickly and so smoothly that it was barely noticeable.

Pain ... real pain ... was tearing at his sister's heart. I felt it thru him. How the hell was I able to feel what he felt her feeling? How was I able to feel what he was feeling? How was he able to feel what she did?

There were many other emotions surging thru her at the same time. Some of her feelings were unfamiliar to him; I could sense his confusion and curiosity. Of the ones he could recognize, pain was the strongest, along with love, which I'm pretty sure came as a surprise to him, fear and remorse.

The pure power of her pain tore at us both and while I could feel it, it didn't have remotely the kind of effect on me that it did on the boy. I simply shrugged it off, tucking the sensations away in a far corner of my being. He cried out loudly, his voice cracking twice, going from light tenor to rasping baritone, fingers clawing roughly at the skin of his chest. He curled up in a ball and croaked out, "Stop it, stop it ... I'm sorry Izzy ... please stop it! I forgive you!"

And with those three simple words the agonizing pain melted away. Where there had been searing and unrelenting ache there was now only love, fear, amazement and ... lust.

Lust? From his sister?

'Don't be so quick to judge.' the light figure admonished.

The boy's body uncurled and relaxed slightly. He stopped digging his fingernails into the skin of his chest and let them fall limply to the mattress.

"Oh god, Ike ... what've I done?"

Ike?

"She called him Ike."

'It's his name. For some reason their parents named all three of their children with names that began with "I".'

"Didn't you say that my name is Ike?"

'We did say that, yes.'

I looked more closely at the pale skinned, red haired boy who lay panting and sweating on the bed. His skin was nearly the same color as the sheets on which he lay. I focused closely on his facial features then quickly let my eyes move to the girl sitting next to him and back again. There were similarities; the sharp high cheekbones, narrow nose, firm jaw line, graceful neck and the spacing of their eyes. Hers though were deeply blue, while the boy's were a very pale gray. Her long thick hair was dark brown, nearly black, while his was a deep, dark red, almost copper colored.

The boy stared off to one side, just beginning to get his breathing back under control.

He muttered again about forgiving her.

The young woman scooped him up in her arms and held the exhausted boy tightly.

We both felt the welling love that filled his sister. The fear was gone, the remorse and regret were still there, but were much less intense than before. And the lust that had been just barely perceptible before had wormed itself up and was piggybacking on her feelings of love for her brother.

For me, if the bright figure was to be believed.

He put his arms around his sister and hugged her in return, lightly stroking her long dark hair and murmuring "It's alright" into her neck. When he did that, the lust grew stronger and merged, becoming one with her feelings of love.

The young boy was puzzled and mildly concerned. He didn't know what to make of the lust.

'Try to understand. Because of his pale skin, Ike here hasn't had what most people would consider a normal childhood. He couldn't go out and play with other children. And on the rare occasions when he did have contact with other people his own age ... well to put it kindly, children can be very cruel. The only love he's ever known in his brief life has come from his mother and grandfather. Even his brother and sister have been unmerciful in their treatment of him.'

I shook my head. "Then why, all of a sudden, is his sister ... his older sister ... having lustful thoughts for her little brother? It makes no sense. And he's what, thirteen? I heard his voice crack, so he's well into puberty. You can't expect me to believe that he doesn't know what lust is?"

'Ike's life to this point has been fairly solitary. He reads a lot, goes outside at night and spends the rest of his time, when he isn't at school, hiding from his brother and sister. And while he is well into puberty, as you noticed, he is about as innocent as it's possible to be.'

"Poor kid."

"I'm so tired..." he yawned widely and slumped back into bed, closing his eyes. His sister tucked him in and smoothing the covers around him. She lightly kissed him and whispered, "Sleep tight ... I love you."

He dozed off and the link was broken and I couldn't sense either of them anymore.

"What happened to him, that day he shot the deer?"

'You were there. What do you think happened?'

I shook my head. "What I think happened isn't possible. It just isn't."

'Arthur Conan Doyle liked to say that when you've excluded the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.'

"That's me lying there, isn't it?" I asked, gesturing towards the sleeping boy.

'That's us, yes.'

"He's, we're ... I'm an empath. I can sense other people's feelings."

'Yes.'

"He," I said, jerking my head towards the sleeping boy, "doesn't know what's happened to him yet, does he?"

'Not exactly, but he's figuring it out. Tomorrow, well ... the day after this day ... he'll take a giant step in understanding and controlling his talent. He'll learn to link with other people, and his sister will help him figure out how to break the link. She also teaches him a couple of important lessons about women and sex. Tomorrow morning they start down the road that will eventually lead us to where you are now.'

"What you're showing me isn't real, is it?"

'Oh, it's real enough.' the dark figure spoke up for the first time in a long while. 'What it's not is now.'

"How is it I can feel what he's feeling, if it isn't now?"

'You aren't really feeling what he feels. You're remembering what you felt then. It seems like you're feeling it thru him, but what's really happening is that you're processing the sensations thru the filter of experience. You're more than twenty years older and much more knowledgeable than he is, so what's confusing to him is obvious to you.' the bright figure told me.

"But I don't remember any of this." I objected.

'Sure you do. One of your many odd talents is the ability to remember everything you've ever experienced, in excruciating detail. At the moment your subconscious is blocking, or suppressing, your entire life. But the memories are there. We, ' he said, indicating himself and the dark figure on my left, 'just bypass the blocks and access those memories.'

'Think of it as hacking an encrypted computer system.' the dark figure chuckled.

I nodded my head and shrugged.

"You told me that I look like you, but the boy ... he has red hair."