Sky is Over

By Eric M. Bosarge

When Christian, a brash young psychologist, and his best friend, Patrick, a washed-up, born again ex-marine, develop psychic abilities, the bond of their friendship feels unbreakable. Christian thinks he’s got it made, immediately using the ability to make his practice more effective and to seduce a sexy coworker.

But when Christi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric M Bosarge
• Release date: Nov 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781942546535

Book preview

Acknowledgments

I never could have completed this novel without the help and feedback of a great many people, none of whom had a greater single impact on this work than Michael Kimball.

This books takes its name from a song by Serj Tankian, and I strived to create a text as beautiful and terrifying as the melody.

The power hand.

That’s what it’s called. You have one too. It’s either right or left, whichever is dominant. Maybe you’re ambidextrous and have two.

Patrick and I, we have only one each.

Right now, Patrick’s waving his power hand—his is right, mine is left—over a coffee table. The table has psychedelic mushrooms cut out of a magazine shellacked into its surface. He made the table in high school.

Three pens—red, blue, and green—lie on the table. His eyes are closed. He’s trying to keep his mind blank.

I’m imagining that blue pen, every contour of it, floating just in front of his face, seeing in my third eye how the sickly yellow porch light reflects off its surface as it twirls there.

His hand doesn’t move. I try harder. See the blue brighter, make it more distinct.

Patrick’s hand floats over the red one, lingers.

Blue, I yell inside my mind, blue blue Blue BLUE. My mind jumps out of my body, close enough to whisper in his ear. BLUE!

Patrick’s eyes pop open. No way.

What?

It’s the blue, ain’t it?

I look away. If that’s what you think, pick it up.

Patrick leans forward and snatches the pen off the table.

I nod.

Patrick tosses the pen down on the table. Jesus.

I lay the pens straight. It’s a 33 percent chance.

Patrick lights a cigarette. The orange glow of the lighter dyes the tips of his sideburns gold. We’re sitting on Patrick’s screened-in porch. In the distance, black waves roll in under a full moon, adding flakes of silver to the breakers crashing on the rocky beach below us. The breeze rustles the leaves on the clump of maples growing out of an old stump on the ridge.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Patrick stands, walks through the dining room into the kitchen, the wood floor creaking and popping as he goes.

I light a cigarette, glance at my watch. It’s well after midnight. I should get going.

Patrick comes back with a drawer full of pens, pencils, erasers, elastics, a box of staples, various-colored paper clips, those little paper binder clips with the bendy wings my brother used to clamp on someone’s nipples every once in a while just to watch them scream, an old Nintendo controller, and a CD case for some band I’ve never heard of. All of this crashes onto the table, burying the pens.

My whole junk drawer, Patrick says.

One in fifty, I say, estimating.

Patrick sits down, scrunches up his nose. ’Bout that.

I’ll go first, I say.

The way we started this is I read a book on magick—with a k. More occult infomercial than slight-of-hand tutorial, the book had this exercise to help develop your psychic abilities. One person thinks intently of an object while the other tries to divine it using their power hand like a dousing rod. It promised to work great if you could find a willing friend to help.

Patrick is my best friend, no doubt about it. I’ve known him since high school. We like the same music, except he’s a little more into that eighties hair metal than I ever will be. We both play guitar and dabble at keyboards. We’re fascinated by outer space, science, nature, the-way-the-world-works kind of stuff. It’s rare to find someone who has that many similar interests.

Patrick and I get each other.

Except on some things, and although we used to be able to talk about anything, he hasn’t been quite the same since he got back from Afghanistan. I thought the vein curling up the side of his forehead was going to burst when I said we shouldn’t be anywhere near there, but then I bit my tongue. That’s when I realized what he did over there in the Marines, that was his life work. It killed him when he got discharged. You can’t expect to be friends with someone if you disparage their life’s work.

You ready? I say. Did you pick something?

Patrick nods. The folds of his chin grow alternately deep and shallow. He’s not as trim as he was when he got back. He doesn’t have to work anymore. It’s sad, in a way, to see him like this. He opted out of college to join the Marines, saw the world, then got injured. He had spinal surgery and a few ribs are fused. Now it’s tough for him to sit still, painful for him to do almost anything.

Okay. I hold out my power hand, look down at all the objects. I shake my head quickly, an athlete trying to clear their mind before a meet, and close my eyes. Just send it.

I fold my arms, tilt my head forward. At first all I hear is the ocean breathing.

I try to turn down the volume in my head, feel the air slowly pass out of my lungs, like I’m meditating, but it’s not working. I see only darkness.

I can’t hear anything. Make it brighter, I say, not opening my eyes.

I lean forward and wave my hand over the table slowly, letting my instincts guide me in the right direction, trusting my gut. My hand lingers over the far end of the table. I open my eyes and see what’s there: the CD, blue and red paper clips, a nibbled pencil, and several other pens, one of which appears a bit like a Transformer toy.

I close my eyes. Okay, send the image. And yell it in my ear.

Pen.

Put it in my head.

Pen.

Put it right there, in front of my forehead.

Pen.

I see a flash as something changes position. Something silver catches the light.

CD.

A breeze brushes my face, opens my eyes. I reach forward and pick up the CD. You think this is just chance?

No fucking way! Patrick stands, runs a hand through his hair.

I saw it flash, I say.

His eyes, dark brown, focus on me. That’s what I was making it do, catch the light and shine it in your eyes.

It worked.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

I had trouble silencing my mind, I say. I think I wanted it to be that transformer pen.

Patrick points at me. I knew that.

You want to try receiving again?

He goes back to his seat. Rubs his hands together as if warming them, then winces and feels at his rib. The other day when we went down to the beach he didn’t take his shirt off to go in the water. I’d never seen him keep it on before. I wonder if he’ll ever take off his shirt to go swimming or if he’s ashamed of the scar. Scars.

You alright?

Yeah. He waves it off. It’s nothing.

I look at my watch. You know what? I should go.

Cancel your first appointment, Patrick says.

I can’t.

Of course you can. He grabs a beer out of the Igloo cooler by his chair and hands it to me. I get the feeling he could sit here on the porch until he’s too old to get up. It’s not because he’s content. He doesn’t know what else to do. It’s nice to have him back but I hate to see him waiting for . . . I don’t know what. An opportunity, I guess.

It’s a good thing he has his son, Mason, every other weekend.

Reluctantly I take the beer. It’s cold in my hand, sweaty. Over the ocean, silver lightning streaks to the sea, illuminating the surf pounding the shore, making the dew on the grass sparkle. I jump when the thunder hits.

Patrick laughs at me.

I take a drink, look over the table to pick what I want to project. I settle on the most obscure object I can find, half buried: a little blue eraser.

It says Pearl.

Alright. I snap my fingers and point at the table. Let’s go.

* *

When I wake up the next day I’m not hungover, but I’m tired. And that’s not a good thing.

What I do is I sit and listen to people’s problems and together we try to solve them. I’m a licensed clinical social worker. LCSW. A therapist.

My first appointment of the day is Kelly. She’s morbidly obese. She used to be a model. Her father is connected to the mob. A few years ago, her husband disappeared. She thinks her father killed him. Her two boys haven’t been right since, either. All I can do is hand her tissues and attempt to focus her on the things she can change. What she can still control. There’s more than she thinks.

Daniel is next. He lost a leg in a work-related accident, nearly bled to death after falling ten feet onto a rebar spike. We talk about his sex life. When the appointment is over, I try to get the image out of my head of him thrusting to one side, flailing about in bed with his wife as he tries to compensate for his lost leg. He’s slated to get a prosthesis soon. I hope it helps.

Some of my clients are here because they need a sounding board, a confidant. They sometimes reach catharsis by the very act of verbalizing their problems. They talk, I listen. Sometimes I offer coping skills, cognitive behavioral strategies, and anything else I can pull out of my bag of tricks.

I wish I could do more.

Near the end of the day, Carl comes in. He’s sixteen, wearing a jersey-length Grateful Dead T-shirt. He looks stoned.

I wake up when he tells me he has suicidal ideations.

How were you planning to do it? I say. I’m glad he told me. That means there’s a good chance he won’t follow through with it.

The bangs of his too-long hair swish over his eyebrows as he shakes his head. I can’t remember the last time he had a haircut. He comes every week.

Methadone, he says.

Why would you take that?

He scoffs. To get high off it. I have this dealer, four bucks apiece. A hundred bucks, four hundred milligrams. Done. He claps. Lickety-split. I’m checked out.

I lick my lips to cover a wince. That sounds like a painful way to go.

Well, a little vomiting, he says, going for shock value. I wouldn’t even notice it it’s so casual when you’re on that stuff. He fake retches over the arm of the couch, pantomimes smoking a cigarette, and shrugs.

He only thinks it’d be that easy. I can see him hunched over a toilet bowl, eyes pinched shut, snot with chunks of hastily crushed white pills dripping from his nose onto his lip as vomit chainsaws up his esophagus.

Carl clears his throat, shifts uncomfortably.

I blink the image away. And this plan shaped up because your girlfriend, she dumped you?

Carl huffs and shakes his head. She didn’t just dump me. She fucked my best friend.

Sounds like a bitch.

Carl looks at me, really looks at me for the first time, laughs a little like, okay, you’re cool. We can be friends. No shit.

How are you sleeping at night?

I don’t. Carl balls a fist, bounces it off his knee. I lay there and this . . . rage pulses through my body.

Two important people betrayed you. It’s perfectly normal to be angry. So you don’t sleep at all?

I think of how little I slept last night. I tossed and turned, wondering if I was crazy or not. The Army and half a dozen other agencies have already done these experiments. Precognition. Remote viewing. MK Ultra. A horde of Hitleresque doctors performing secret experiments with a massively impressive complement of pharmacological weapons probably didn’t have half the success that Patrick and I have had after a few short weeks playing around with it. We’ve been nailing it. Every single time since the first night.

Patrick and I shouldn’t be breaking down any new walls. If anything, I expect us to top out soon. But what if everything I know about psychology—about the world—is wrong?

Lately I don’t even try, Carl says. I hang out the window and smoke pot, fall asleep in front of the television.

The bags under his eyes testify.

Do your parents know you’re smoking pot? I say, which is to say nothing of the opiate use.

Carl’s lips twist to one side. They don’t know shit.

I know his mother is in the waiting room, one door away from a tell-all. Kind of sad, really. I write communication on my yellow legal pad.

Carl scratches at his wrist, picking at it.

Is that something you want to show me?

He pulls up his sleeve, almost proud. Three horizontal, crisscrossing, superficial scabs.

I clip my pen to the pad. Now I don’t have a choice. I have to tell his mother. You know, death isn’t pretty. I picture Carl in a bathtub filled with red water, his toe floating next to the drain switch—which seems to smile. A wreath of vomit floats around his neck like algae. His hand hangs out of the tub, finger pointing like David’s in the Sistine Chapel toward a razor half submerged in a puddle of blood. A white pill sits at the edge of the puddle. The blood seems to nibble on it, turning it red.

Carl grips the arms of the couch and shifts his weight back as if trying to stay grounded. His eyes grow wide as he casts about, making sure the walls still hold up the ceiling.

What the hell was that?

Carl visibly swallows. Gulps air.

Did I do something? Did I just project that?

Carl sweeps the hair out of his eyes and squints at me.

I need to say something. Now.

Carl, you do know that you have options. At your age, if you ride it out, the whole world opens up.

Good job, chief. That will get him. Okay, enough with the self-talk.

Carl looks out the window. Tall, alligator-skinned pines sway in the breeze. His face ticks when he blinks.

High school doesn’t last forever, I say.

His face grows hard. He scratches at a pimple below his nose, looks down at his fingernail, wipes it on his pants.

When the moment’s gone, all you can do is wonder if it really happened, if you’re insane or not.

Carl motions to the clock. I think our time is up.

I explain that I have to tell his mother about his cutting. That he has to promise to call me, day or night, before he tries again.

He agrees.

I’m not convinced.

I tell myself this was progress.

* *

I should cut down those fucking trees, Patrick says, indicating the clump of maples. His grandfather cut down the main tree years ago and a bunch of saplings grew out of the stump. The house belonged to his grandfather. No note on the property. Patrick can stay as long as he wants.

They grow fast, though, don’t they?

Like weeds, I say.

Patrick scratches the back of his neck, wipes the sweat off his brow. It’s one of those few summer days in Maine when the heat is oppressive in the evening, even on the coast.

I know I got some loppers around here, Patrick says.

Do it another day.

Patrick settles back in his seat. Yeah, you’re right. The ice in his glass swirls as he takes a sip of tea.

Is this your weekend to have Mason?

Patrick shakes his head as he swallows, reaches for a pack of cigarettes. Next weekend. Hey, you want to try the mind thing again?

Hell, yes, I say, relieved. I didn’t think he’d ever mention it. I was starting to think I imagined the whole thing.

"Aw, I know! Patrick says. It’s just so . . . It’s just cool, you know?"

It’s more than cool. It blows everything I know about psychology out of the water.

If I believe that I psychically influenced Carl, then traditional thinking in abnormal psychology is totally wrong; schizophrenics might be experiencing a deeper level of some other order of consciousness, not random hallucinations. On the other hand, maybe I’m the crazy one.

Patrick leaves to get the junk drawer. I take a photo frame out of my jacket pocket and stand it on the table. The other day I showed up when Portia was picking up Mason. They were screaming at each other inside, their voices echoing through the neighborhood. I stopped to smoke a cigarette, not wanting to interrupt, trying not to eavesdrop, but they were so loud even a couple chickadees in the maple tree by the end of the driveway seemed concerned about it.

Portia came storming out, Mason in tow.

I said hello to Mason, watched as Portia’s old Pontiac spit gravel and backed out of the driveway.

That’s when I heard the glass breaking inside Patrick’s house. Like something had been thrown.

Patrick stood in the doorway, a shadow behind the screen, and told me to come in.

When I passed the trash can later, I saw the photograph of Patrick, Portia, and Mason under a layer of broken glass, their smiles strained. I took it out, dusted off the photo, and slipped it into my pocket. Later I scanned and cropped the picture so Portia couldn’t be seen and reframed it.

I try not to judge. Portia didn’t have an easy go of it while Patrick was on his first tour, but it’s hard to feel compassion for her. She’s filing for full custody because she wants to move south with her new boyfriend. Patrick would never see Mason again.

When Patrick returns, he stops dead, eyes on the photo.

That frame was too nice not to use, I explain.

Patrick shakes his head, jaw clenching, then smiles. Thanks. Thank you.

He sets down the junk drawer, picks up the photo, smiles. "I shouldn’t’a thrown it away.

Okay, well, let’s not cry about it. I laugh. Set up the stuff.

Yes, sir. He mock salutes.

Right now, there’s nothing Patrick can do to make it better and we’ve been there, done that. The thing about anger is it festers.

When Patrick’s finished, he motions to the table. What are we gonna do when we’re sure this works? When there isn’t any more doubt?

I don’t know.

A professor of mine once explained what it’s like to experience a true hallucination: terrifying. A pair of shoes without feet stalks you down the street. Then in an alleyway a tiger is crouched beside a green Dumpster. There’s always doubt. Reality is subjective. At the end of his lecture, the professor shrugged. Some people just get dealt a bad hand. Maybe some people get dealt an extraordinary hand and they just need to embrace it, like Carl. The kid got a fifteen hundred on his PSATs.

I tell Patrick about what I think happened with Carl, being sure to keep his name out of it.

He gonna off himself? Patrick says.

Well, I don’t think he ever intended to. And if he saw what I saw—

But you don’t know what he saw, Patrick says, pointing cigarette-holding fingers at me.

He finishes the last of his tea, sets the cigarette down in an ashtray, gets up, walks into the house.

I pick up his cigarette and take a drag.

He comes back with more tea and an ice water for me. I thank him.

Well, I’ll go first, he says.

I want to try receiving with my eyes open. Not looking down at the table, not really looking at anything except the window screen and the endlessly rolling ocean beyond, I let my eyes go out of focus as if I’m staring at one of those trippy 3D pictures where an image emerges if you look long enough.

I hear a whisper, reach forward, and pick up a little army man, his rifle pointed and his feet spread in perpetual target practice.

Then my eyes shift into focus. I’m still staring at the sea. I haven’t moved. The army man is still on the table.

It was really just that quick. I can’t believe it.

I snatch up the little army man, twist him back and forth, inspecting. I can’t tell if he has stripes on his arm like you did.

Did you do that with your eyes open? Patrick says.

I laugh. I don’t really know.

This ain’t just chance anymore. That’s probably, literally, one out of a hundred.

As I look down at the spread, an aloe plant on a table in the corner of the porch catches my eye. Curveball.

Ready, I say.

I stare at the sea for some time. I can see the plant in my periphery. I can picture it. Seen it so many times I never need to see it again.

Patrick’s eyes are open, glossy. I picture his eyes snapping to the right. Focusing sharply on the plant, I whisper the word plant deep inside his mind, right next to his ear.

I picture a dry, red patch of skin, a broken piece of aloe oozing its goodness.

Jesus, all I can think of is that damn aloe plant, Patrick says. And that makes me think of the tree.

I give a knowing smile.

Reviews for Sky is Over

[daleala · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a bit of a weird book.2 friends experimenting with ESP find they have control over matter.One of the friends is a war veteran, and uses his power to cause all this weird stuff to happen.Unfortunately the copy I had was not formatted to my eReader, however I persevered, and found the book picked up towards the middle, but the ending was a bit blasé.

[bkjake · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received this book free for review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.One of the very few books I am unable to finish. The beginning with their experimentation was fascinating, but when it became impossible to keep reality and telepathic construct separate as they were constantly flipping back and forth, it just lost me. I got too frustrated in following a portion of the plot to only find out it wasn't real. Maybe if there was a device used like a different font, I might have kept going.If the goal was to bring the reader along on a descent into schizophrenia, then the book was a success.

[jlleonard · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book was confusing and hard to follow. I rarely knew what was real and what was happening in the character's minds. I tried to plunge ahead to see if it got better but was disappointed. I usually finish any book I start but to be honest, I couldn't finish this one.

[antares1_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sky is Over by Eric M. Bosarge was really different and at times totally confusing. It follows two friends as they develop psychic powers, which causes an epidemic of psychic powers. Many times I had no idea if they were talking real world, or in some one's head. It made the whole thing very confusing. I fell asleep reading it more than once, because if was so disjointed. Unless you like that stream of consciousness style I wouldn't really recommend this book. The characters for all the mind/memory reading weren't that well develop, and I couldn't figure out what was really motivating them. The romance was way too quick. He just met her and a couple of days later wants to get married. It didn't seem at all natural, there was really nothing to indicate they were compatable with each other.

[silentq_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow, this was trippy. Two friends are experimenting with reading each others minds, just hanging out drinking on a porch by the sea in Maine, when ... it starts to work. One is a disabled vet, the other a social worker, and they react to their new skills (as it expands to work on others) in very different ways. Patrick wants to get his son back, Christian wants to help people, and then things go pear shaped. It was sometimes hard to tell what was someone else's memory, what was a shared mental construct, and what was happening in the real world (by design). The love story with the psychiatrist was a bit shoe-horned in, the story was strong enough without that. There were interesting takes on how people react when they thought the end of the world was nigh as a psychic apocalypse threatens.