Visions, Page 2

  Chapter 2

  February 10, 2003 Three years later

  Just like all the other nights when Virginia dreamed about catastrophic events, she woke up covered in sweat. She looked around her bedroom frantically looking for Ryn, but remembered she wasn’t there. They both chose to attend different colleges. Virginia chose to stay close to her father while following in her parents footsteps to become a social worker. Ryn attended school upstate at Syracuse University for a Liberal Arts Degree. What she really wanted was the freedom.

  Virginia changed her pajamas, which were a pair of basketball shorts and a tank top, and then went in the kitchen to get something to drink. She walked past the living room and saw her father sleeping on the couch with the television on. She picked the remote up to cut it off and as soon as the screen went black Robert woke up.

  “Hey…I was watching that,” he said with sleep in his voice.

  “Daddy, you was knocked out,” Virginia said with a smile.

  “I must’ve fallen asleep watching the Knicks game,” he said as he stretched. Virginia went in the kitchen and poured a glass of water. Robert followed her. “You just getting in?”

  Virginia sighed and said, “No, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “What’s wrong, you having nightmares about the boogie monsters?” Robert teased.

  “Yeah, something like that,” Virginia said in a low tone before walking pass him.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa…now hold up just a minute,” Robert said concerned. “Now you know you can talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  ‘What else do I have to lose?’ Virginia thought. “I keep having dreams about bombs going off in the projects.” There…she finally told someone.

  “What?”

  “Not just bombs, terrorist bombs. They’re going to attack us.”

  “Baby listen, a lotta people was traumatized after the September 11 attack. Hell, some people still having nightmares about it, or afraid to even fly for that matter,” Robert rationalized.

  “I had nightmares about that too two weeks before it happened.”

  “What?” he asked shocked. He didn’t know whether to believe her or not even though her face told him she was being completely honest.

  “I had it all the way up to the 10th. Each night they got worse and worse. They were so clear that I could smell the people skin burning.”

  “Baby, maybe you…maybe you just imagining…,”

  “It’s not my imagination daddy,” Virginia said with a tear in her eye.

  “Baby I…,” he paused letting out a loud sigh. “I don’t know what to tell you.” He was at a loss for words. He didn’t know whether he should feel sorry for his daughter. What he was witnessing he saw constantly in his line of work. Teenagers being committed and diagnosed with schizophrenia, suffering from delusions and uncontrollable outbreaks once they entered early adulthood. There was a simple explanation for this, it was a chemical imbalance. But for Robert Walden, there were no simple explanations, it was his daughter now being affected. “If you want, I know some people you can talk. They’re good people who can help.”

  “Talk to ‘em about what daddy?” she asked sadly. The tears began to cascade down her cheeks as if she was wounded by a jilted lover. “Talk to ‘em about what, about how almost every time something terrible happens I have nightmares for two weeks before it happens? Talk to ‘em about how the nightmares be so real that…”

  “Baby calm down…please. Just take it easy,” Robert pleaded.

  “That…that I can hear people scream after I wake up?”

  “Virginia...,”

  “That I can still smell their skin burning like…like the stench is stuck in my nostrils?!” she asked hysterically.

  “Please…,”

  “So they can think I’m crazy? Shoot me up with Haldol and lock me in a room so I can sleep or talk to myself like a lunatic?” Before Robert could reply she added, “No thank you!” and stormed off to her bedroom slamming the door behind her.

  The very next morning Robert Walden had Virginia committed in St. Luke’s psychiatric ward. He watched her through a windowed door as she kicked and screamed in an isolation room. He was accompanied by a college friend who worked at the hospital as a psychiatrist.

  “If you want, we can restrain her, for her own protection of course,” Dr. Schwartz suggested as they watched her together.

  “No…no restraints. I don’t want them used unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Robert told him. He never believed in restraining clients unless it was totally necessary. “She’s a good kid. She’s just…” He was emotional, on the verge of breaking down at the sight of his daughter.

  “Robert, I understand. You don’t have to explain this to me of all people,” Dr. Schwartz told him. They had known each other for far too long and some things just didn’t need to be explained between old friends. “I know about your fiancé. Besides her, has anyone else in the family ever tried to commit suicide?”

  Robert took a deep breath and let out a loud sigh. “No…just her. She uh, she hung herself. When she was pregnant she complained all the time about these terrible nightmares.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “She started sleeping less. I was working extra hours at the hospital and when I came home she’d cry about ‘em. I thought her hormones where just going crazy. I came home one morning after working a night shift and I found her in the closet. She had hung herself. She was eight months pregnant. I dropped to my knees and cried. I never tried to call for help or anything. I guess I was too distraught but a minute later, as I was crying, I heard her gasp…for air. I hurried up and took her down.” He took a deep breath and continued. “They rushed her straight to the operating room, keeping her on life support while they performed an emergency C-section. By the time they finished delivering the girls she was still alive but brain dead. I had them pull the plug two days later.

  “Robert, you don’t have to…”

  “It’s okay,” Robert said as he watched his daughter through the glass. “I loved her so much. I named the girls after her. Virginia has her first name and Ryn had her middle name.” This brought a light smile to his face.

  “Speaking of Ryn, how is she doing? Is she having any problems?” Dr. Swartz asked.

  “She’s fine. She was always stronger, mentally, ever since they were toddlers.”

  Virginia startled them as she walked over to the window and said, “Daddy please, get Ryn. You’ll see that I’m not lying,” as she cried uncontrollably.

  “Don’t worry Robert, I’ll look after her as if she was my own.” Dr. Swartz assured him.

  That night Robert went home and called Ryn. Robert informed her of Virginia’s fragile mental state and just like a devoted sister she promised to be there the next day. As for Robert, he sat in front of the television all night drinking the same beer with his thoughts on Virginia. He eventually cried himself to sleep. He wasn’t asleep too long before his peaceful sleep was invaded with thoughts of his fiancé.

  Ryn rushed inside St. Luke’s Hospital at ten the morning dressed looking as if she was going to a party, but it was her normal attire. She was dressed in a pair of Italian cut pants that stopped below her waist line in back and above her stomach in the front, with a white ruffled dress shirt with white matching leather pumps and thin gloves. The kind ladies wore in the fifties and sixties. She found her father standing in front of the window watching Virginia toss and turn in her sleep as she laid on padded floor of the isolation room. He had been standing there watching her since eight o’clock that morning.

  “Daddy, how is she?” Ryn asked her father as she gave her him a tight hug. She could see he had been crying.

  He sighed and told her, “not good. The nurses said she woke up three o’clock this morning screaming. They said she screamed for over an hour and wouldn’t stop. They had to sedate her. She sleeping now but she keep tossing and turning, crying in her sleep. She keep screaming the people are burning, save them.” A tear escaped his eye.
“She won’t talk to nobody, not even me, her own father. The only one she keep asking for is you,”

  Ryn saw her sister balled up laying in a fetal position in a far off corner in the isolation room helpless. She was on the verge of crying too. “Can I go in to talk to her?”

  “I have to get the doctor to ‘okay’ it because they think she’s a danger.”

  “Well, is he here now? Can we ask him?” As Robert went to get Dr. Schwartz Ryn watched Virginia. Ryn sympathized with her because to a certain degree she knew what she was going through.

  Robert returned several minutes later with Dr. Schwartz. “Doc, this is Virginia’s sister Ryn. Ryn this is Dr. Schwartz, he’s a good friend of mine. He’s the one taking care of your sister.” He told her that so she’d know to be on her best behavior.

  “Nice to meet you,” Dr. Schwartz said shaking Ryn’s hand. He was stunned by her good looks. The twins were identical but Ryn was sexier.

  “Likewise,” Ryn said managing a smile. “Is it alright if I go in to talk to her?”

  “I don’t have any objections, but if it’s possible, I would like to ask you a few questions first.”

  “Sure.”

  “Your father tells me you and your sister go to separate schools. Are y’all still close?”

  “Of course. We talk all of the time.”

  “When was the last time you two spoke?”

  “Like three days ago. We never go longer than that without talking.”

  “Did she tell you she was having any problems, with say, school, work or a boyfriend perhaps?”

  “No, nothing like that but I knew something was wrong.”

  “How so?” Dr. Schwartz pried.

  “By her voice. She sounded…off. Like she was sad about something. You know what I mean?” Ryn could tell he was analyzing what she said. After a few seconds of deep thought Dr. Schwartz unlocked the door and allowed her to enter the isolation room.

  “Ginia, it’s me Ryn. Wake up,” she told Virginia as she bent down in front of her.

  Virginia opened her eyes slowly, looking from Ryn to her father and Dr. Schwartz, who were still standing in the doorway observing. “Ryn is it really you?” Virginia thought she was dreaming.

  “Yeah it’s me…it’s really me. What’s going on?”

  “Ryn, they keep giving me drugs. They think I’m crazy,” Virginia told her as her eyes got wider. “You have to help me. Tell ‘em to let me go. Tell ‘em I’m not crazy.”

  “I will but tell me what’s wrong. Was it another dream?”

  “Yes!” Virginia answered happy knowing Ryn understood at once what was going on. “A lotta people are gonna die! People we know!”

  “Tell me about it. Tell me about your dream.”

  “Look for yourself,” Virginia told her. Ryn looked at her sister’s sadden eyes, then she looked back at her father and Dr. Schwartz, who were watching intently.

  She didn’t want to, but for her sister she would do anything. Ryn pulled the glove off her right hand and caressed the side of Virginia’s face lovely before keeping her hand still on her face. She heard people screaming, she saw them crying, searching for missing loved ones. She saw three buildings in their housing complex crumbled in pieces on the ground. There was fire and smoke everywhere. She could hear the sirens from the emergency response trucks and the police wailing in the background as they scrambled to get to the disaster scene in time to save people. She could even see the severed limbs and smell the burning flesh of the victims trapped in the rubble. This horrified her the most and she was beginning to pull her hand away from Virginia’s face when she saw her mother. It took her a moment to make out what her mother was saying but when she did she removed her hand from Virginia’s face.

  “Oh Ginia,” Ryn cried. She now knew what tormented Virginia.

  “Tell them. Tell ‘em so they’ll believe me. We can still save them,” Virginia pleaded now that she had an ally.

  “How long you been having them?” Ryn asked compassionately.

  “Last night was the fourteenth night,” Virginia said sadly.

  “Oh Ginia…it’s too late,” Ryn cried.

  “We can try.”

  Ryn wiped her tears away put her glove back on and walked to her father and Dr. Schwartz. “What happened?” Robert asked her.

  “We have to call the police,” Ryn told them ignoring her father’s question.

  “Why?” Dr. Schwartz asked.

  “Terrorists planted bombs in the basements of the Mitchell Houses,” Ryn told them.

  “You expect us to believe that because you touched her? Your sister is schizophrenic, she’s delusional. What she saw wasn’t an omen,” Dr. Schwartz told her bluntly.

  “Baby, that doesn’t make any sense,” Robert added.

  “I also saw mommy. She told me to make you see too so you can believe,” Ryn told him.

  “What?” Robert asked.

  Ryn placed her bare hand on her father’s face. She didn’t think it would work because up until now it only worked with Virginia. She had definitely tried quite a few times with a few of her boyfriends. In an instant her father’s dreams from the night before flooded her vision. She saw her mother and father dating, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. Then she was her mother pregnant walking around their apartment with a sad look on her face. Ryn followed her to the bedroom and as they stepped inside her mother turned around with a sweet smile. “Ryn this is far enough. Tell your father I’m sorry and it wasn’t his fault.”

  “But mommy…,” Ryn cried out not only in her vision but for real. Robert and Dr. Schwartz looked on amazed.

  “Ryn, you have to go before it’s too late. Go help your sister,” her mother told her.

  “But mommy wait. I wanna talk,” Ryn pleaded as she took another step in the room. She saw the closet. It was empty no with no clothes inside it, just a rope hanging from the top. Ryn didn’t understand but an instant later it was like a light bulb went off in her head. Her mother realized it too. “Mommy…”

  “Ryn go!” her mother demanded as she pushed her out of the dream.

  Ryn opened her eyes to her father and Dr. Schwartz’s stunned looks as she cried. Not a hard cry but the tears fell nevertheless. “She told me to tell you she’s sorry and it wasn’t your fault,” she told her father.

  “Oh my god,” Robert said shocked He had that dream plenty of times over the years following her suicide.

  “You have to call the police. Tell ‘em to check the buildings along 135th street,” Ryn told him.

  “Okay baby,” Robert said as he pulled out his cell phone. He still couldn’t believe what he just witnessed.

  “Doctor, you have to release my sister. She’s not crazy,” Ryn Dr. Schwartz.

  “I’ll start her discharge papers right now.” He was just as stunned as Robert at what he had just witnessed. All his years of medical school and dealing with the human mind had never prepared him for such a moment.

  Ryn rushed back to her sister’s side and told her, “Ginia, they listened. I’m getting you out of here, right now,” as she helped her out of the corner. She then led her out the room to the nurse’s desk. They were all shocked, one even did the sign of the cross as Virginia stood in front of her.

  “It’s all over the news,” a middle aged nurse told them.

  “What’s on the news?” Ryn asked.

  “A building blew up in the Bronx. Just now, not even five minutes ago,” the nurse told her. Robert’s cell phone dropped out of his hand as he stared at his daughters.

  “We too late,” Ryn said.

  “No we not. We can still help the others,” Virginia told her.

  Ryn believed her sister. “Daddy where’s your car?”

  “It’s out front, across the street from the hospital,” he told her shocked.

  “Come on we outta here. We got to help them find the other bombs,” Ryn told him. “Ginia, can you help us find ‘em?”

  Virginia quickly shook
her head yes.

  “Good…come on,” Ryn said as she ushered Virginia out of the psychiatric ward and out of the hospital with their father behind them. As they drove through Manhattan, making their way to the Bronx, Robert continued to call the authorities. He was transferred to various people in the police department, then to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and finally Homeland Security. They all asked the same questions, where were the other bombs and how did he know they were there. He told them the truth.

  When they entered the Bronx from the 138th Street Bridge they found the streets impassable by car so they got out and walked the three remaining blocks, Virginia could see the smoke rising from the bomb site. From two blocks away she could hear people crying frantically. As they approached the bomb site police tape could be seen surrounding certain buildings. Brick dirt, glass, steel, and body parts were mangled together in the debris as residents of the housing complex assisted the police in the search for survivors.

  Twenty minutes after Robert notified the authorities and forty-five minutes after the bombs exploded the F.B.I. and Homeland Security, in a joint effort, had the remaining eight buildings checked for any remaining bombs. They found three more, all of which were set to go off an hour after the first ones exploded. The community demanded answers and was on the brink of rioting as the day turned to night leaving some residents displaced with no place to turn to. The community showed it cared by opening its doors and hearts to those who were left homeless. Virginia and her family were standing in front of their building assisting those in need by serving them hot coffee and sandwiches when a black lady in her early forties, well dressed wearing a black pants suit, accompanied by two white men also in suits walked over to them.

  The black lady looked at the twins and asked, “And which one of y’all lovely young ladies would happen to be Virginia Walden?” as she took a cup of coffee from their table.

  “That would be me,” Virginia answered cautiously. With everything happening around them she figured people from the government would be coming around asking questions sooner or later.

  “My name is Dolores Washington. I head a special division within Homeland Security. Do you mind talking to me for a few moments?”

  Virginia was nervous. She looked at her father for support.

  “I’m Robert Walden, Virginia’s father. She’s had a long day with little sleep so I would appreciate it if you came back another time,” Robert told Agent Washington politely but firmly.

  “I would love to Mr. Walden but what I need to talk to you daughter about is of National Importance,” Agent Washington told him just as polite.

  “It’s okay daddy, I will talk to her,” Virginia said before Robert had a chance to lose his temper.

  “I was told you were an extraordinary young lady with an exceptional gift. If it’s true what they say I would like to offer you a job.” Agent Washington could see the puzzled look on Virginia’s face. “Now before you get any perceived notions about us, let me explain. We pay our agents decently, with a unique opportunity to not only see the world, but also to help protect it. We can even help you get that Social Worker’s degree you’ve been dreaming about just like your mother.”

  “How’d you know that?” Virginia asked amazed.

  “We’re the government Virginia, we know everything,” Agent Washington said replied with a confidant smile.

  “What division of Homeland Security did you say you were from again?” Robert asked butting in.

  “I head a special division called Vision. We focus our resources and energy on people like your daughter with psychic abilities. I would like your Virginia to join us in our quest to not only make the world safer but better,” Agent Washington explained.

  “What makes you think I want my daughter running around fighting terrorist?” Robert asked irked.

  Before Agent Washington had a chance to respond Virginia spoke up. “I’ll do it!” Everyone was shocked.

  Agent Washington smiled and said, “I figured you would. Here’s me card, give me a call first thing in the morning. I’ll be in New York for a few more days. We can meet and talk specifics.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Virginia said as she marveled at the exquisiteness of the business card. Agent Washington turned and walked away with the two gentlemen following right behind her.

  More Coming Soon

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