Jack and Holly Field were simple and practical people, possessing no remarkable talents in any way. Therefore, it was even more astonishing, that the child they only begot after being married for seventeen years, had some extraordinary talents.
When William was two years old, his parents began to suspect that their only son was different from other children.
He was, regarding his physical growth, absolutely normal in every way, nothing indicated that there was something that made him be different from others.
When William began to speak, it became apparent that he was someone special. One day, when they were sitting together in the living room, he pointed at the ceiling with his small hand and said “Daddy ouch.”
And while Jack was still thinking about what his son had wanted to tell him with that, the lamp loosened from the ceiling and hit him hard on the shoulder.
“Daddy ouch,” William repeated, smiling happily at his father.
Jack and Holly forgot about the incident, but when, two years later, William said to his mother “Don’t cry, Mommy, I don’t like when you cry. And Grandpa doesn’t like it either,” they should once more be reminded of it.
Somewhat surprised, Holly looked into her child’s blue, innocent eyes, wondering if William wanted to play a game with her.
The next day, she came to know through a phone call that her father had died.
The older William got, the more he told his astonished parents about things that would happen in the future and the more vocabulary he knew, the more details he told them.
It was impossible for the Fields to ignore the fact that their son obviously, as strange as it may have sounded, had the ability to predict future events.
Especially Jack had more and more problems dealing with that.
He loved his son more than anything else in the world – and at the same time he was afraid of him.
Jack was an ordinary man, sticking to simple principles; everything that differed from the norm was suspicious to him.
When William got older, he felt that his father distanced himself more and more from him.
He knew by the way he twitched when William would enter the room and how he avoided looking him in the eyes.
And every time he predicted something, he mumbled “Stop it William, stop it right now”, leaving the room without looking at his son.
When William was in his third year in school, his teacher Miss March discovered that he also had another talent: he was unbelievable gifted in drawing.
His pictures were so vivid and outstanding that she, if she hadn’t known that an eight-year old had drawn the pictures, would not have believed it and she decided to talk to his parents about an encouragement.
She started the conversation with the words “Your son William is a really special boy” and in her excitement didn’t notice the nervous glances that Jack and Holly exchanged.
They had wondered for a long time when the moment would come that someone else would also notice that something was not right with their son.
But when they realized that Miss March was talking about his artistic endowment, they sighed with relief.
They assured her that they would think about sending their son to an art school.
But this was not to happen.
One evening, their neighbours visited the Fields.
William was sitting on the floor, too intent upon the drawing he was making to look up. He finally noticed his father when he called for him for the third time.
“It’s late, William, you have school tomorrow. Put your drawings away and go to bed.”
“No classes tomorrow,” William mumbled, without looking up from his drawing.
“What the hell are you talking about, of course you have school tomorrow, it’s Wednesday!” Jack resented.
“But the school will burn tomorrow” William answered, finally looking at his father.
Panic spread through Jack when he felt the questioning looks of the neighbours on himself.
He jumped up, grabbed his son’s arm with force and dragged him away.
In his room, he slapped him in the face, shook him and screamed:
“I told you to stop this nonsense, how many times have I told you!”
William’s cheek burned from the hard slap of the hand and although he didn’t want to, he started to cry.
“This was the last time that I tolerated this nonsense!” Jack said with a dangerously silent, hushed voice, before he left the room.
The next morning, when they were having breakfast in silence, they heard the radio moderator say:
“Last night, three previously convicted youths were caught while they were setting the Whitmore Primary School on fire. Although the fire brigade arrived on time, one of the buildings was completely destroyed in the flames. The school stays closed until further notice. The motive for the action is still unknown…”
Jack jumped up, grabbed the radio and smashed it onto the wall with vehemence, before leaving the house without another word.
In the evening, William heard his parents argue.
“He’s not normal Holly, don’t you see that? I can’t bear that anymore…”
“Don’t say something like that, it’s not his fault, it’s not anyone’s fault.”
“Why can’t we have a normal child, like everyone else? What have we done wrong? He… he’s so strange. Why does he do that? Why can he do that?”
“Please, Jack…”
Not even five months later, William lived alone with his mother and only saw his father on two weekends each month, after that even more seldom.
When he was a teenager, he fully realized what his talent meant.
He could even tell absolute strangers, who he met for the first time in his life, important things about their future.
With some it was very easy, with others he had to concentrate a little more and with some he was not able to see what would happen in their lives at all.
It was totally normal to him, he didn’t know anything else.
He learned through the years that his talent scared others and made them insecure, but he did not guess that it could scare him himself even more.
So much fear that, when he met his former teacher Miss March one day and saw what was to happen to her, his life changed completely.
He met her one day by coincidence in a café and the moment he shook her hand, tiny tesseras started to whir around in his head and finally put themselves together to a clear picture.
He staggered and passed out.
He had seen Miss March lying on her bed.
Her eyes had been opened wide.
Her throat... too.
Several days, nothing at all happened and he thought with relief, that maybe this one time he had been wrong.
But when he opened the newspaper one morning and read about the brutal holdup murder of Miss M., he puked into the washbasin and then went back to bed.
He felt sick and miserable and a strong despise for himself.
When he woke up from restless dreams, he realized that nothing was like before.
At that time, William was 17 years old.
**********
The sun wasn’t shining very warmly yet, but one could go out without jacket.
Many people had gathered at the lake that day.
Some went for a walk, others were jogging, but most sat on benches and enjoyed the first warm day of Spring that year.
So did the young man, who let his pale face be shone on by the sun for a second, before he began to rummage in a big bag and pulled out some sheets of white paper.
He sharpened a pencil and, with trained fingers, began to draw lines on the paper.
The lines, first dancing completely incoherent on the paper, assembled to a clear picture as if they had been worked on with magic.
The people who glanced at him shortly thought that he might be drawing the lake, but if one had a closer look at him, one saw that he didn’t pay attention to the water.
The picture he drew showed the face of a young woman.
Soft curls gently framed her beautiful face, the lips were curled into a gentle smile.
The young artist held the pencil almost stubborn in his left hand, while he eagerly finished the picture.
He felt strangely calmed down when he had finished the picture, as if he had finally given in to an urgent need.
Carefully, he placed the picture with the front on his knees and sighed.
He knew that what he had drawn was absurd.
But not because he was bad at it, quite the contrary.
Everyone who was versed in arts would have rubbed the hands at his work, but nevertheless; the fact that he was drawing was highly confusing for him.
Since he had waken up this morning, the picture of this woman had pushed itself into his mind.
He didn’t want to think about what that might mean and tried to forget about it.
But he didn’t succeed.
He felt like an idiot when he pushed the picture into the bag and slowly stood up from the bench.
He couldn’t see what exactly he had drawn.
Because, since that day eight years ago when he had read the article about his teacher... William was blind.
Tbc??