Buried Treasure - 4. Part 4

I woke with a start, my senses telling me I wasn’t alone in bed. I slammed my shields up trying to remember what had happened the night before.

“You know it’s not nice to have the mental equivalent of the door slammed in your face this early in the morning!” Craig stated fairly calmly from the other side of the bed.

I started to remember parts of the previous day, I remembered the child dying and racing home. I remembered pushing Craig out the way and falling onto the bathroom floor. I thought I remembered Craig stripping me, feeding me pills, putting me to bed and holding me till I passed out.

I did a mental check and found I was in much better shape than I should have been. I should have still been passed out and I should have woken with the symptoms of a very bad hangover.

I finally turned over to face Craig; he was lying on his back and had obviously had trouble getting on the bed as his chair was tipped on its side on the floor.

“Morning,” I said quietly, because although it wasn’t as bad as it should have been, I still had a dull headache.

Craig must have seen I was in pain but instead of saying anything he laid his hand on my face. I instantly felt my headache reduce even more till I could barely feel it at all.

I stared at him in astonishment; the only people I knew who could do what he had just done were psychic healers.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I’m a psychic healer, remember?” Craig answered with a frown, “I healed you as much as I could over night, but you were in a lot of pain and the best I could do was keep you asleep.”

“When did you become a healer?” I asked, what did he mean by ‘remember’?

“I wrote to you from University last year, my ability was slow developing, so it didn’t manifest itself till I was nineteen.”

“I didn’t get a letter about any healing ability.”

“I wrote so many letters how on earth could you remember one specifically? Maybe you just forgot I told you?”

I looked at him a while before making a decision. I left the room and returned a few minutes later with a package that I handed to him.

Craig looked at what I had given him; it was a pile of letters, tied up with string. He opened them and his eyes went wide at what he saw. “This look like every letter I have ever written you. You kept them?” His gaze met mine and his eyes had tears in them.

“You are my best friend and the only one who accepts me as I am without questioning me all the time. No one else likes it that I keep my shields up all the time, no one else understands my need to be left alone at times. When you were at university it was the longest we’d been apart. So when I got a letter it was like you were here with me.” I realized I was babbling and quickly shut up, I hadn’t meant to say that much but by the look on Craig’s face he didn’t mind.

“I didn’t ask any questions about why you kept your shields up because I figured when you were ready to trust me, you would tell me. I got used to reading your expressions instead, I can tell when you’re lying, happy, sad or annoyed.”

I looked at him in surprise, “I’ve always trusted you and if you had asked, you are the one person I would have told without hesitation.” I leant back on the bed and tried to get comfortable.

“As you know my father was killed when I was five, well my abilities surfaced soon after that. My mom found a mentor, named Mark, who lived near us by going to the council and asking their advice. To protect me from questions at school it was put out that I had a private tutor to help me with some advanced school work.

“As Mark worked with me my abilities grew very quickly. First I was only able to search for people who I knew and who were conscious. Then it expanded to include people I didn’t know. It was quite by accident we found out, I could find unconscious people. You remember that neighbor’s kid that went missing?” I waited for Craig to nod, “Everyone was told she lost consciousness after I found her, but the truth was she was already unconscious, but I knew exactly where to look for her.

“The last abilities to make themselves known were telekinesis and the worst one, the ability to hurt someone mentally if I wanted to or if they made me angry enough that I lost control.”

When I had finished my brief story, Craig was staring at me but with my shields up I couldn’t tell what he was feeling.

He must have seen something on my face because he reached to lay a hand on my face, “Trust me,” he whispered “drop your shields… at least partially.”

I looked into his eyes and I dropped my surface shields but made sure any romantic feelings I had for him were buried deep under a second shield. As I started to feel his emotions, I found he felt sympathy for me and gratitude that I assumed was for sharing my story. I caught a flash of another emotion but it was gone so quick I didn’t have time to name it.

Then I realized Craig was leaning towards me, he looked like he was going to kiss me. But he wouldn’t, would he???