The utter devastation was palpable, but not in anything he could lay his hand too. The charred walls, the ash, the withered remains of life—broken picture frames, a table that was somehow still standing though part of the roof had fallen on it—nothing remained to tell him what he knew, felt, sensed, with that weird power that was his curse. What had been a home was empty now, even of its ghosts.
He stopped, waiting for the question that was forming in the back of his assistant’s mind.
“I don’t know,” he said preemptively.
The assistant gave no answer.
“I didn’t know, and I don’t know why,” he explained. “I should, I should think, but why not this time…I always have before.”
“There’s some reason,” said the assistant. “You’re blocked maybe or—”
“Blocked?” he turned around and smiled at the soldier. “I’ve never been blocked. I suppose, though, I suppose I could be.”
He fell into a brown study, his eyes roaming the desolation. A monster. That’s what it seemed, but maybe a fake? He hadn’t talked with the witness yet. A liar or a dup, or maybe…
“I’ve been trying to think how I could miss it,” he said aloud, more to himself than his companion. “There’s always been warning of an intrusion. There was one last week. We got it. Maybe I felt it, but there was two this time? It’s always only one, but maybe. Or maybe, it’s some sort of farce, a cover up. Murder made to look like a rampage in the wake our last visitor. That seems possible, maybe. But, I feel intrusions. What if it didn’t intrude. Could it be home grown, or old, ancient, something that’s been here a long time.” He sighed. “I don’t know why I didn’t know this time, but I don’t really know how I know what ones I do. You see, it’s a rather frustrating thing, to be responsible and out of control at the same time.”
Tale Told 