Chapter 8

I was a bit surprised by Michael leaving so quickly, but now that I had another adult to take care of me, I could see why he didn't feel the need to be present. To be honest, I was a little hurt by his abrupt departure, feeling a little bit abandoned. It was only later that I understood what it was he did in his time away from me, although he never admitted it. It also taught me that a hero did what was right rather than what was legal.

He didn't want to trouble my conscience with his actions, but after other conversations with him about other actions that came later, I worked out that if he knew evil was being done, and without his actions would continue to be done, he felt obligated to take action.

In the week he was away from me, my step-father mysteriously disappeared.

During that week I also learnt that my problems weren't over just because I now had an adult who cared about me. I had the potential to be a financial burden on my mother, but I had some plans that could help us in the long run. Neither my mother or my sister cared about that and I felt very welcomed and loved by them both. However, legally, I was still in hot water. If my mother admitted that I was present then I would be returned to the family that didn't care about me and had both abused me and allowed that abuse to continue.

In the short term, I was pretending to be a visiting cousin. My ability to hide would help as a young child not going to school would raise questions, but spending the next seven years doing that wasn't really a solution. I believed my ability to heal those whose soul had been damaged and project my emotions onto people, could be used both to help people and earn money. Michael had said that he was going to contact some people that would need my help and I couldn't think of another way without raising suspicion. I wanted to go to the women's shelter as I had no doubt that I would have lots of potential patients, even if they couldn't afford to pay. I just couldn't think of a plausible excuse for an eleven-year-old to go there and stay for long periods of time.

Mum still went to work and Kate was still going to school so I had much of the day to myself. Kate gave me a yoga workout DVD and mum asked me to do a bit of housework, but that still left me with too much time. I practised my violin, reaching out with my emotional sense and stretching my soul energy. I felt my special senses were getting stronger with all the practise I had been doing. While I was on my own I spent large periods of time with my energy pulled in and that took effort. Like a muscle my ability to use it was getting stronger with use.

In the evenings we spent some family time together. Kate took it upon herself to teach me all the things she felt a young girl should know, even giving me magazines to read as homework. Using my emotional sense and touching her with my energy I was able to get her to open up with all the things that were bothering her. Mostly it was petty stuff like Beth said this or Ruby did that and it hurt her emotionally and just talking about it was enough to lessen the intensity that she was feeling.

I think we are all emotional creatures, especially women and those emotions spike our soul energy. Such spikes seem to settle on their own if they are allowed to discharge properly, but like a sore spot, we want to keep prodding it to check it is still there, keeping that spike active. Sometimes I felt all I needed to do was get her to talk about it, but if it was really strong, she needed to distract herself until she had calmed down and then we could discuss it more rationally. Or I could cheat and use my energy to direct hers. Kate was my willing experiment. Mostly she preferred it when I could just get her to talk about it and put it in context, but if it was too sore, she appreciated my direct intervention.

Kate didn't have any of the damaged soul symptoms that I had seen on Michael, but there were areas of her aura vibrating with negative emotions that had no bearing on her present and when I healed them Kate sometimes got flashes of the possible cause in her past or just the emotion. I also managed to treat her spider phobia, although that required me to treat her while there was a spider present which left us both emotionally drained from the experience.

Kate was fascinated by it all and wanted me to teach her to do the same things. I tried various strategies and had no success with the emotional sense. I tried putting her in as much sensory deprivation as possible and then projecting emotions that she would report and then reduced the intensity. As soon as I stopped projecting she couldn't sense a thing.

Our energy sense experiments went much better. If I poked her aura she could feel it. Initially, I had to use quite a lot of force, but we were able to train her so that she could feel much lighter touches. We had a bit of a breakthrough when I managed to compress her outer energy towards her body. She noticed I was touching her and when I let go she felt her energy expand. It took a lot of energy on my part so I couldn't do it frequently, but eventually, Kate was able to bring her energy in a little bit on her own and then release it.

We also did some trials with my invisibility ability. First of all, we checked whether I affected cameras and that was a complete bust. Video or camera could see me just fine regardless of what I was doing with my energy. The next question was, did it matter what I was wearing? Yes and no. Even knowing I was there it was hard to see me when I pulled my energy in, but it was possible if I was wearing clothes that contained metal. We checked with wood and plastic and both of those stayed unseeable, but metal zips or belt buckles could sometimes be seen, if you knew what to look for. If I held something away from my body it still couldn't be seen, unless it was metal and that was when anything metal really stood out. If the metal was covered by my hand it disappeared and the same if it was behind me. Likewise, Kate could hide behind me and also be invisible, but only if she couched down so that she was completely behind me. If any part of her stuck out, she was seen.

Mum didn't want me to treat her at all, so I left her alone despite the aura shouting for help. From what I could tell she didn't have holes in her energy so I didn't think she was damaged, just lots of negative emotions that she was holding on to. The thing is, despite everything that Eric's father did to hurt her, I think she still loved him and felt letting go of all the emotions he caused would push her to let go of her love for him. I'm pretty sure the only reason she left him was because he hit me and that she couldn't take.

It was frustrating. I wanted to heal her and help her get on with her life. As far as I was aware she hadn't dated anyone since Eric's father and didn't seem to want to make any efforts in that direction. But... it was her life, her journey and even if I wasn't now an eleven-year-old girl, having the power to act didn't give me the right to interfere.

It was an interesting moral question. On Michael, I felt compelled to act and do my best to heal his damage. There were others who had filled their damaged energy with this evil energy and those I left alone. I could project emotions at them, but I knew from trying to work on my step-father that trying that had limited success. My presumption was that people had their soul damaged at some point in their life and then either lived with it, healed it or invited evil in.

I decided that getting permission to treat was preferable, but I would try and do the right thing and not limit myself to hard rules. I wondered if I had met my step-father when he had a damaged soul before the evil came in, would I have been morally right to treat him, whether he wanted me to or not. My mum not wanting to be treated showed me that people sometimes didn't want to be healed, they felt some comfort in wallowing in their pain.

Morally I felt that was their choice as long as it wasn't going to hurt others and that was the difficult question. In hindsight, it was easy to see those who should have been treated, but that was not the world I lived in.