Sharing The Darkness

“¡Uno…dos…tres!” the attendant yelled, and on the count of three the combined voices of all the men groaned in seven-part harmony. “Again! Try it again!”

Melanie told an unresponsive Chris to stay in the car, and followed the sound of the voices until she stood just around the pocked corner of the gas station. Then she averted her head in quick negation, closing her eyes sharply against the sight of a man lying too still, apparently crushed by the old Chevy that had lost its mooring on the jack and now was being held some two feet above the man by seven straining men.

“Throw it over,” the attendant yelled.

“But Demo’s Chevy—”

“Throw it over! Who cares about the car? On three…. ¡Uno…dos…tres!”

The heavy, battered classic flipped over with a groaning shudder and slithered down a muddy embankment.

“¡Madre de Dios! He’s alive!” a woman screamed.

Melanie opened her eyes again and tracked the line of the woman’s pointing finger. The mechanic, though bloodied and covered with oil and grime, was indeed feebly moving. Melanie couldn’t have said how, but he was.

“Jaime, andale! Fetch El Rayo!” the attendant yelled. Then, without looking to see if the young man he had clapped on the shoulder did his bidding, he bent over the hapless mechanic.

“But, Pablo…” the young man protested.

“Now, damn it! Fetch him!” the attendant snapped, again without looking at Jaime. The youth stood uncertainly for a moment, then bolted into the thick trees flanking the gas station to the north.

Pablo bent lightly, resting a hand on the injured man’s brow. “Demo…Demo, boy, can you hear me? You’ll be all right. Abuelito called for an ambulance.” The attendant looked upward, as though praying, then back down as he said urgently, “And he comes soon.”

Melanie held her breath. El Rayo—Rah-e-yoh—might be translated to mean The Man of Thunderbolts. Was her quest to be ended this easily? Or was the peculiar term, “El Rayo,” some odd colloquialism for doctor or even ambulance? But the attendant had said, “He comes…”

He…El Rayo.

She’d spent the last nerve-racking two weeks dodging around the country, slinking in and out of seedy hotel rooms at night, spending entire days in a paid-with-cash rental Buick, accompanied only by her unusual and telekinetic son, seeking a man who was said to destroy brick buildings by a mere wave of his hands. A man who, according to the files at the PRI, was a recluse, a barbarian and a would-be killer. A man who could literally move the earth or eradicate it with a look.

Was he the man with thunderbolts in his fingertips?

Melanie realized that until this moment, hearing the odd designation, she had nearly given up hope of finding the man she sought. She had never felt foolish in her quest, that wasn’t it. Anything she could possibly do now, any bizarre hope of saving Chris from the scientific experiments at The Psionic Research Institute was worth any investigation. But just an hour earlier, lost and tired, her back aching from the many miles behind the wheel of her car, and tired of dodging free-floating bits of tissue, food wrappers, or even the road map, she had been prepared to admit defeat.

If there was a powerful telekinetic hiding in these rugged, terrifying mountains, it was obvious he didn’t want to be found. Up to now she’d been relying on every facet of her own telepathic abilities, her own clairvoyance, and they might have led her here, but she wasn’t even sure where here was.

From the files, she’d illegally studied, she’d known he was reclusive. She’d known he’d be hiding. And dangerous? her mind offered. Yes, she’d also known that, both from the files and from her own chaotic and vague dreams in which a man named Teo Sandoval called her name as electricity flew from his very fingertips. Dreams that always left her shaking, a scream choked in her throat.

But at the same time, the very dangerousness that was inherent to the man she sought, dreamed about, was what made him her last hope of saving Chris from being taken from her. Her former husband, Tom, had already signed over his custody rights to the PRI…it hadn’t taken them long to try to secure hers. And when she’d refused, still furious with her ex-husband for even thinking he could get away with such a thing, they had made it perfectly clear how little an obstacle they considered her. If she weren’t around, they’d said, Chris would become a ward of the court. And since Chris’s own father wished them to protect his only son, no court in the world would deny their petition for full custodial rights.

She had fled the institute that night, knowing full well that the PRI scientists, privately funded and not regulated by any governmental watch committees, believed themselves above any and all laws. They had no intention of letting anything get in their way, especially not a mother who didn’t exhibit any sign of their coveted telekinesis. So, by fair or foul means, they planned to snatch Chris and harbor him at the Psionic Research Institute permanently, a captive subject to their bizarre experiments and brutal testings.

A woman holding a small child moaned and sagged, but was caught and shushed by the older woman nearest her. “Be quiet, Doro. Pray. El Rayo comes. One touch and your husband will live. You know. Believe it.”

At this Melanie had to stifle the flood of questions that sprang to her lips. If she voiced any of them, she might be asked to leave, and she couldn’t do that until she was certain this El Rayo wasn’t the man she sought so desperately. To forestall the surge of hope welling inside, she reminded herself that she wasn’t in the rolling countryside of Pennsylvania any more, she was in the backwoods of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, a place where the superstitious populace still believed in curses, witches and miracles. A place where she was the only Anglo in a world of ancient Spanish; the outsider who neither fluently spoke their unusual dialect nor understood their customs.

Pablo pulled back from the mechanic and Melanie had to cover her mouth with both hands to restrain an instinctive cry of dismay. It would take nothing less than a bolt of lightning to help this man. In fact, Melanie doubted there was much a trained physician could do, even if he carried patented miracles in his little black bag, for the mechanic was all too obviously dying. Automatically she lowered her precious mental guard to seek the mechanic’s thoughts and caught them too easily.

Madre de Dios…why can’t I breathe?

She slammed the gates of her mind tightly closed. She couldn’t bear hearing a dying man’s thoughts.

Seeing the crumbling face of the woman holding the child tightly to her shuddering breast, hearing the murmurs of the men around the dying mechanic, Melanie felt disassociated. She seemed in two places at once. Here, in the chill October afternoon rain in a lonely mountain village in northern New Mexico, carnage at her feet, and there, in a too bright laboratory, watching a team of white-coated men attach electrodes to her son’s chubby chest while he cried at the chill of their fingers and shrank from the fear and longing in their eyes.

“The ghost clouds come,” the mechanic’s wife moaned, snapping Melanie back to the present. “Demo will die. See how they come for him!”

Melanie tilted her head to follow the woman’s gaze, not needing to squint her eyes against the soft rain. Thin, fog-like wisps of white snaked through the tall pines, slinking over the high, treeless peaks and silently creeping downward toward the village. Melanie restrained a shudder. She could see why a superstition about the clouds might be generated. They did indeed look like stalking ghosts.

A bird swooped down from a nearby tall pine and, as one, the crowd around the mechanic gasped. The mechanic’s child began to cry, restively, perhaps from being held too tightly against his mother’s breast.

An older woman called out, “An owl! It’s an omen! Call Tierra Amarillo’s church for a priest!”

Pablo growled something about “talking goats” at the woman, then fell silent, his gaze fixing in Melanie’s direction. One by one, the rest of the group turned, grew quiet. For a moment Melanie thought all eyes were trained fearfully on her, then she realized their cumulative gazes were just beyond her shoulder. She felt an almost atavistic fear of turning around to discover what could hold that many voluble people so absolutely silent. Could Chris have left the car, dancing objects in his wake?

She fought the sudden attack of nerves and turned.

The youth, Jaime, stood to one side of the muddy station stalls, as though keeping a fair distance from the man who strode across the water-burdened street toward him and the garage. Melanie had the urge to do the same as the young man and couldn’t resist drawing closer to the damp and chipped adobe wall.

Behind her, the crowd now gathered around the dying mechanic sighed and whispered, “El Rayo…El Rayo.” The muted voices underscored the strangeness of the man approaching them.

He walked as though in no particular hurry, though his stride was steady and broad. Like a bullfighter’s, Melanie thought, snared by the sighing, chanting voices behind her, or like a king’s all-powerful steps.

“The car fell on Demo,” Pablo called out to the silent figure, cutting through the whispers. “He lives. But only just.”

“El Rayo,” the mechanic’s wife begged, “help my Demo, please.”

Melanie turned to look at the group of townspeople and noticed they had all pulled back—like Jaime, like herself—as though contact with this stranger would be injurious to their health. She couldn’t blame them. There was something so dark, so forceful, about the man that it seemed to exude from his very pores. And yet, almost as if whatever it was about him was electrical—and if he was the man she sought, it might very well be electrical in nature—she felt her skin respond to his presence.

He was of Latin descent, with a dark complexion and jet black hair that hung far below the collar of his shirt, farther still, perhaps beneath his shoulder blades. Either one of his recent ancestors had been Anglo or he was a throwback to the true Spanish that had originally settled these mountains, for the man’s eyes were a glittering pale blue-gray, the color of the sky on a stormy winter’s afternoon.

This imposing stranger wasn’t tall, perhaps only six feet or so, but his shoulders were broad enough to strain at his rough flannel shirt. His hips were narrow, and his thighs, tightly encased in his jeans, were muscled and thick. Moisture clung to his dark hair and seemed to shimmer, creating the impression of a dark liquid halo.

This had to be him, Melanie thought wildly; everything about him exuded dark mystery and raw sensuality. He was more spirit than man, a wild black stallion, a lone timber wolf, a clap of thunder on a cloudless night. He gave the impression of absolute power.

She had to know if he was, indeed, Teo Sandoval, the man she’d needed so desperately. She unveiled her mind a notch and reached out to him when he paused, stopping at the side of the building. His eyes seemingly took in the entire scene at a glance.

His mind was questing so—reading all—she couldn’t get through, and dropped her guard another notch.

He said nothing as most of the people tried explaining what had happened at the same time. He turned his gaze finally, and with cool appraisal, to Melanie.

She felt a moment’s pure shock as her gaze linked with his, as his mind tried to probe hers. It was a rare enough occurrence, to actually lock eyes with someone, but it wasn’t the rarity of it that triggered an inner quaking in Melanie. An elemental sexuality seemed to transmit from the stranger like the coldest of mountain winds and, at the same time, like the heat of a cliff’s edge baked too long by a summer sun. She knew instinctively this man was like no one she had ever known before, and she couldn’t seem to think clearly enough to decide whether that boded well or ill.

Lines from the files on him she’d read chased through her mind, incoherent, fleeting. After the fiasco, after his demolishing an entire wing of the PRI when they had pushed him too hard, after he had escaped their clutches, one psychiatrist had written of him: He’s a man of extreme conscience. I don’t know whether Teo Sandoval should be condemned or praised. But at all costs, he should be left alone.

If not for Chris, at that moment Melanie would gladly have turned and left the man alone, abandoned her quest for his help, because, linked with his gaze, for a single, shattering moment she had felt as though they were the only two people on earth. She shivered, feeling totally and wholly exposed. Then she felt him strengthen the probe to her mind, as though ready to rifle through her thoughts, glean every drop of knowledge about her. She swiftly clamped her mind closed, slamming the door on her thoughts, her soul. That slam seemed to echo inside her and it somehow hurt.

Though he didn’t so much as flinch, some instinctive knowledge told her that she wasn’t the only one affected by their exchange. Something about it had shocked him, as well. She had the oddest notion that for a single flicker of time she had been looking into the man’s very soul. She had caught a glimpse of a well of anger and loneliness trapped inside him. An aloneness so extreme that it seemed far removed from any mere lack of human companionship, to the point of being another emotion altogether, one that would make others cringe in terror.

She didn’t have the sensation of reading the man’s thoughts, there was no tingling awareness of any sort of telepathy or mind transference; she knew that feeling all too well. This was more simply and starkly a case of knowing some facet of his innermost feelings. Nothing anyone said could have persuaded her that she was wrong at that moment. What she’d seen, what she’d felt, was an intimacy as strong and bonding as the marriage of night and day, as sharp and poignant as a final farewell.