The Black Aura - 2. The Learning

Well the dawn was coming,
heard him ringing on my bell.
He said, My name's the teacher,
that is what I call myself.
And I have a lesson
that I must impart to you.
It's an old expression
but I must insist it's true.

JETHRO TULL – 1970

4

She made it to Thanksgiving weekend. We came back to school after the long weekend to a flag at half-mast. None of the other guys had any inkling while we were waiting for the doors to open and let us in that they’d just lost a chunk of change, but I’d seen Mrs. Miller on the Wednesday before. I knew payday was right around the corner. They didn’t have to wait long to find out either. The morning announcement that day consisted of one and only one subject.

“Attention students. We regret to inform you that one of our teachers was in a car accident last night and has passed away.”

Bill was the only one of the five of us that was in my homeroom, but he shot me a look that showed his disbelief in Baskin Robbins 31 flavors.

“Mrs. Miller” (dumbfounded looks from the other three bettors present) “was returning home from a relative’s for the holiday weekend and was killed by a drunk driver. Counseling sessions will be scheduled for any students who feel the need for assistance dealing with their grief.”

I was a pretty unpopular guy that lunch time. Everybody who now owed me money was either giving me dirty looks, yelling at me, or ignoring me completely. Unfortunately, enough were yelling at me to spark Mr. Stansfield’s attention. The Early American History teacher had the unpleasant duty of being lunch monitor that day.

“Mr. Noonan, what’s going on?”

“Um...”

“He knew Mrs. Miller was going to die a month ago. He bet me twenty-five dollars that she’d be dead by Christmas.”

Thanks a lot Sally Jensen. I should have known better than to take the bet from that rich-bitch stuck-up...

“I think we need to take a walk to Mr. Littleton’s office.”

“Wooooh” from like, the whole cafeteria. Mr. Littleton was Vice Principal, in charge of suspensions. Or at least that’s the way we all felt.

“How did you come up with the idiotic idea to bet someone that Mrs. Miller would be dead by Christmas?”

Stansfield queried, but I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to consider what would happen when she died, and I tried to collect my bets or had to explain it to anyone. Blinded by the dollar signs I suppose.

“Well, if you won’t answer my questions, you’ll be answering Mr. Littleton’s.”

It wasn’t a long enough walk from the cafeteria to the main office for me to come up with a reasonable explanation. The office was pretty much just around the corner. Also, just my luck, there wasn’t anybody else in Mr. Littleton’s office. I didn’t get to sit out in the waiting area for a few minutes to think about it. Nope, straight on into a huge surprise. Mr. Littleton’s aura was a deep blue.

5

“So, Master Noonan,” he grumbled, “To what do we owe the honor of this visit to my little kingdom?”

I must have looked as nervous as a bug at an Orkin convention because he immediately toned it down about ten notches, temporarily. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Mr. Stansfield helped out. Even he was a little nervous, but then it wasn’t the most pleasant topic.

“Um, Master Noonan bet a number of his classmates that Mrs. Miller would pass away by Christmas.”

“Is this true?” Littleton asked in the most perplexed voice I had ever heard.

“Yes, sir.”

“What compelled you to do something like that?”

Here’s where a few minutes to plan out my escape from a situation like this would have helped immensely.

“I knew she was going to die pretty soon, just the same way I know you have less than six months yourself.”

“Why, you little...” Mr. Littleton looked like he was going to explode. Even Mr. Stansfield even took a step back. Those ten notches came back, with about 40 friends.

“Get him out of here. He just bought himself a ten-day vacation.”

I suspect that was the shortest visit ever in Mr. Littleton’s office since he became vice principal around the time whatever was gaining on Satchel Paige finally caught up with him.

“You’re making the best of this, aren’t you Avery? You’ve never been in a lot of trouble before, but today you go from zero to 60 in 4 seconds flat. What is going on with you?”

If the walk from the cafeteria was short; the walk to the guidance office was nothing; about 6 steps. Once again, I had not a lot of time to think about my answer. I figured discretion was the better part of valor, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Ms. Carson, is Mrs. Rose available?”

“Yes, Mr. Stansfield, I’ll let her know you’re here with a student.”

Mrs. Rose was the guidance counselor. I suppose she was a nice lady, from what I’d heard, but I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting her officially before then. At this point in time, I knew I was in enough hot water that the truth would definitely NOT set me free. But I had to think of something.

“Wait here Avery, I need to talk to Mrs. Rose alone for a moment.”

Finally, I get a chance to catch my breath a little and calm down. Or so I thought.

“What is the matter, Avery?”

Ms. Carson was the school’s administrative assistant. I guess she ran the office pretty well, because she always knew everything that was going on. “Are you upset about Mrs. Miller’s passing?” She consulted her computer terminal. “Hmm, you weren’t in her class.”

“No, Ms. Carson. That’s not exactly why I’m here.”

I guess my tone was such that it was obvious I wasn’t going to share, so she didn’t pursue the question any further. Those three minutes somehow seemed to both last forever and pass much too quickly, I still hadn’t a trace of an idea of how I was going to get out of this.

“Come in Avery.” Mr. Stansfield was back to his somber self.

“Hello Avery. Please have a seat.”

Mrs. Rose was polite and soft-spoken, “Mr. Stansfield has told me you’ve been predicting people’s deaths, and attempting to profit from it? Why would you want to do something like that?”

Being a few weeks past my 15th birthday, I didn’t have a lot of life experience to draw upon. Most 15-year-olds were in a constant live for today mode. I was no different.

“I don’t know. I guess the bets seemed like a good idea at the time. Being scared and nervous was the reason in Mr. Littleton’s office.”

Mrs. Rose asked, “What would you have done if you lost all those bets?”

Could telling the truth here get me in deeper or begin the start of my rescue? Here goes nothing.

“Well, I knew I wasn’t going to. I have a, um, unique ability. I see auras around people and can sort of determine when they’re going to die, at least if it’s pretty close. Their aura turns black.”

The library was louder than Mrs. Rose’s office for a few moments. Hell, space would have been louder. I could see they were both incredulous and had no idea how to continue. Mr. Stansfield recovered first.

“How long have you been able to do this?”

Mrs. Rose looked at him like he was as crazy as she thought I was. She obviously didn’t believe me. “How do you expect us to believe you?”

I didn’t think saying ‘well Mrs. Miller was dead’ would be smart, but it was the only evidence they were aware of. “I’ve seen three others in the last two and half years or so. I was there when all of those people died.”

Even Mrs. Rose’s psychiatric training couldn’t have prepared her for this. I had an advantage over them having been through this a few times. At least two of them I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

“We’ll have a talk with Mr. Littleton about your suspension. We obviously can’t allow you to profit from the unfortunate passing of Mrs. Miller, but ten days is excessive for that. Why did you say he only had six months to live?”

Again, Mr. Stansfield being more receptive to the idea took the lead in the belief race.

“His aura is a pretty dark blue. When someone’s aura gets dark, their time is running out. Mrs. Miller’s was a dark green when I saw her in October. My friend Jimmy’s was real dark green the morning of the day he died.”

I decided to share the other instances as well, where the only color I saw on the person was black. Mrs. Rose was leaning a little more toward believing me. If Mr. Stansfield had any doubts before, they were gone now.

I ended up getting a three-day suspension. Mr. Littleton retired in June and died in early July. Seems he’d had cancer for a while and never told anybody in the school. Or at least nobody gave any indication they knew. I hadn’t yet learned all the nuances of shades and hues. I told him six months. He made it a little more than seven. When I heard he died, I wasn’t so pleased with my reasonably accurate prediction. Neither was Mr. Stansfield when I walked into his classroom the next September. But he became my friend and confidant for my last three years of high school. I never did get that Xbox game.

6

I was lucky in a sense that for most of the rest of high school I didn’t run directly across anybody else about to meet the reaper. Since my first attempt to profit from my ability failed so miserably, I decided to take a more scholarly path. I thought if I can’t make a little money now, maybe with good planning, I can make a lot of money later. I started to keep a journal of everybody I encountered whose aura was pretty dark. When I could, I looked up their obituaries starting a few months later. It never became a complete list, sometimes I met people and didn’t get their names, other times, being a teenager, I simply blew off searching for death notices all the time. I had to have some fun.

I started a journal on my Personal Computer, as they were known back then. Hey, don’t knock it. I already told you this story started over fifty years ago. All the toys and tools we have today were probably just a glimmer in the minds of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Patton Gilson. Mr. Gilson perfected implanting knowledge directly into the brain, in case you didn't know. Anyway, I tried to match the color of the aura I saw as closely as was possible at the time. In hindsight, I guess I did a pretty good job; being able to predict the day of someone’s death up to about two years in advance within a week, and almost to the day even a couple months beforehand. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I do that a lot as you may have noticed.

It was early in my senior year when the next opportunity presented itself. Of course, had it been a teacher, or anyone associated with the school, I definitely would have taken a pass. But it wasn’t, and the gentleman was already getting up in age. OK, I was eighteen, so sixty-eight seemed practically ancient. James Aberson was one of those guys you always see running through the town. Bicycle shorts, guinea t-shirt if he had a shirt on at all, running at only slightly more than a slow walking pace. Most of the time you don’t know anything else about them. Nobody seems to know where they live, what their story is, etc.

Not true in Mr. Aberson’s case. He lived in a huge house half a block from the center of town. He was one of those guys who had to have a perfect lawn. When you walked past his house, first of all he was almost always outside trying to get some aspect of his landscaping that much closer to perfect; if he wasn't running, that is. Second of all you made damn sure you stayed on the sidewalk, or better yet, the other side of the street. He should have been ninety, the picture of the old man shaking his fist yelling “get off my lawn you rotten kid” would then have fit him perfectly. So even though he wasn’t associated with the school, he did have that mean streak in common with Mrs. Miller.

When I saw him “jogging” with a dark brick red aura, I knew something was up. It was odd to me that his aura was red in any form. I’d only run across a few of those so far and none of them were this dark, so I never knew what their fate was. It didn’t click that Jeff’s was a reddish-brown for all the time I knew him. I guess you just never think about your friends dying, especially as a teenager. You seem to overlook those things.

But I was about to find out what it meant, and in the process, learn another lesson about my unique gift. I’d already figured out that green led to an accidental death, having seen that happen for both Jimmy and Mrs. Miller. Blue led to a death due to sickness, or disease, like Mr. Littleton. I’d seen a few more of each of those in passing in the previous couple years to make those assumptions turn pretty solid. Yellow turned brown and led to essentially natural causes, old age, etc. Red was still a mystery. But not for long.

You might remember my friend Jeffrey Pillser. He’s the one whose dad was a drunk and that fact helped acquire himself the nickname 'Pilsner.' Since I tried to win ten bucks off Pilsner a few years back, things hadn’t gone too well for him. His mom had left a year earlier with one of her many boyfriends. I guess she was too selfish to worry about taking Jeffrey with her. Or maybe her sugar daddy didn’t like kids. Anyway, when Jeff’s dad drank himself into an alcoholic stupor and then a grave this past spring, Jeff went to live with an uncle that couldn’t wait until he turned eighteen so he could kick him out. October 3rd was the day Jeffrey’s life would take a change for the worse, start on the path toward intersecting with Mr. Aberson, and end in disaster for both. Bye, bye uncle.

Jeffrey is out on his own and not dealing with it too well. His friends, I amongst them, did what we could to help, but we were seventeen and eighteen ourselves and didn’t have the wherewithal to be able to do much for him. I suppose Jeffrey decided that he’d have to help himself by doing anything possible to survive. Possible not necessarily being on the right side of the law. Jeff had always had a thing for knives, so he had quite a collection. What he hadn’t pawned yet to buy food were his most prized possessions.

We suspected he’d pulled off a few robberies that happened recently that were still unsolved, but nobody knew for sure. So, it wasn’t a stretch to discover he’d use one of his knives to try to pull himself up out of the gutter. Of course, when you use that method to try to move up, you’re not elevating your status in society to anything more acceptable. It was two weeks after Jeff was kicked out that Mr. Aberson’s red aura would turn black, courtesy one Jeffrey Pillser.

Jeff must have been going through a pretty bad stretch. He missed school that Monday and Tuesday and none of us had seen him since the last bell on Friday. Mr. Aberson had been out on one of his runs late that Tuesday afternoon. Everyone knew he made a pretty large circle around the town and was out of his house for a fair amount of time.

Jeffrey decided to take advantage of this fact and broke in to rob the big house on Peach Street. As luck would have it, bad for both Mr. Aberson and Jeffrey, he must have pulled a muscle or had some other reason to head home early. Jeff was just about to walk out the front door with his pockets and duffel bag full of Mr. Aberson’s cash and jewelry when Mr. Aberson came home. In any other situation, Jeff would have cut up Mr. Aberson, left the house unseen and headed to the nearest pawn shop to hock the jewelry and likely gotten away with murder. But that’s where I came in.

Even having never seen a dark red aura before, I had my suspicions regarding its meaning. Unfortunately, an eighteen-year-old kid wouldn’t have much credibility if he walked into the police station and said something like “I know someone who is about to get murdered,” and not have any details on the impending crime, aside from the victim’s name. I did, however, have a favorite teacher, mentor, and confidant that would at least back up my story about how I might have this information.

So that’s why, on the morning of Saturday October fourteenth, Mr. Stansfield and I walked into the Plattsville police station and tried to convince them that Mr. Aberson was about to meet his untimely end. Mr. Stansfield, being a teacher, was convincing enough in his arguments to have the police put a light tail on Mr. Aberson. So, an unmarked car followed him around town, quite successfully it would seem, as Mr. Aberson didn’t seem to notice. Three days later, Jeffrey slipped into Aberson’s house, was loading up his pockets and then getting himself all bloody cutting up poor old James.

Imagine the officer’s surprise when young master Pilsner walked out the front door carrying a duffel bag and dripping with blood not five minutes after watching Mr. Aberson walk in. New Jersey didn’t have the death penalty at the time. Yes, many states did believe that killing criminals was an acceptable punishment. But Jeffrey Pillser ended up spending the rest of his years behind bars at East Jersey State Prison. Both of them.

My database was growing. Yellow/brown meant old age; blue: illness; green: accidental; and red meant murder. Actually, a violent or unlawful death I learned in the intervening years. Drug addicts that ended up overdosing were red auras. Between encountering people on the street, in stores, and elsewhere around town, I’d run across about forty people who passed away by the time I graduated high school. You might think that’s a lot, but the lion’s share were natural causes and illness.

You wouldn’t think it, but every time you walk through a mall, there’s at least one person there who won’t be back for the Christmas sales. In a town of 12,000 or so, encountering forty of the people who died over the course of three years really isn’t a lot, that’s a little more than one a month. Don’t you think one person you don’t know dies every month?

With the experience of Mr. Aberson and Jeffrey behind me, my future was pretty much preordained. I had been leaning toward going to college somewhat locally at Rutgers anyway, but when I found out they had a pretty respectable criminal justice program, my planned major went from the overcrowded field of computer science to criminal justice/forensic science. I had already learned that I couldn’t change the outcomes, so I was determined to at least make sure that those who died too soon and for no good reason would get some level of justice. It turns out to have been a pretty good, and lucrative, decision, as you’ll clearly discover in the ensuing pages.