Visitations by Jonas Saul Read Free Book Online Page B

late now for second-guessing; he was committed. He had to do it.
     
    After starting the truck, he put it in gear and started toward the security gate. The only movement was the heavy gate rolling back as he neared it.
     
    Twenty kilometers to go and ten thousand dollars to spend , he thought.
     
    He was on his way. Checking the mirrors frequently, he saw no one following him. At each red light he stopped. In everything he did, he was meticulous. Over halfway to his destination, and no one was following him. He was sure of it.
     
    The only thing that made him jump was the disturbing sound of his cell phone playing “Stan” from Eminem as it began to ring.
     
    He fumbled in his breast pocket, losing concentration on the road for a second. The call display told him it wasn’t his wife. It said private caller.
     
    “Hello?”
     
    “Pull over immediately. Stop the truck!”
     
    The psychic.
     
    “What?” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it, as if it held an answer as to who was calling. Then he shouted out of fear, “What the fuck is going on? What do you know?”
     
    “You are out of time for niceties. In less than two minutes you will be dead unless you pull over and stop the truck. Do it now.”
     
    Jerry looked ahead and could see a red stoplight about a hundred meters away. Nerves hit him, his stomach dropped, hands shook. He decided to err on the side of caution and put on his turn signal, moving to the curb.
     
    “Okay, I’ve pulled over. You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me why. If what you have to say doesn’t fit well with me, then I’m going to continue driving.”
     
    Sitting in the cab of the truck, his heart beating in his throat, he listened as the woman talked again.
     
    “I was told that you needed my help. I was told to interfere for a greater justice.”
     
    “What the hell does that mean? Did my wife call you? Is she behind this? That would make sense. How else would you get my cell number? Oh, wait, don’t answer that. You’re psychic, right. Got it.”
     
    “Joshua told me.”
     
    Those words cut him down. Joshua? What was she talking about ?
     
    A stray bullet hit Joshua over a year ago in a park. The police never caught the asshole that did it. Jerry dropped his head and concentrated on breathing.
     
    “This is a sick joke,” he managed to mumble.
     
    “No joke. He said it wasn’t your fault. You were both in the park the day he was shot. Even though it was your idea to play catch, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. He made a point of telling me that you always said, ‘ oh my gosh, look it’s Josh ’. Apparently that was something his mother disliked, but you loved saying it when it was just the two of you.”
     
    Jerry didn’t know that words could have such an effect on him. He tried to speak, despite the lump filling his throat, but couldn’t.
     
    “I can see and hear things from the Other Side that don’t make sense, but that came through anyway. In this case, Joshua came through very strong. As we talk right now, he’s still trying to tell me something.”
     
    There were a few moments when Jerry couldn’t hear anything. He scanned the mirrors and the empty road ahead but everything remained calm.
     
    “He said you are slumped over the wheel of the truck, idling about one hundred meters from a red light that’s still red.”
     
    Jerry looked up and could see that it was in fact still red.
     
    “It’s true.”
     
    “The light isn’t defective. The people that hired you have fixed it to stay that way. A block down on the right side of the red light you will find a car filled with four men, each with silenced weapons. I’m being told that you are marked for execution. After your jail time, they found out that it was your son they’d killed that day at the park. They think you’re working for them so that you can expose them. They want to kill you. I’m sorry. I can only tell you what I’m being told.