Second Sight

​A splash of milk swirled in Tremaine’s coffee. The dairy billowed, folded in on itself, and bled across the steaming surface. It was like the unpredictable dreams that plundered his sleep. Dozing off while reading, books had haunted him last night. Leathery tomes had leapt off a high shelf, pages fluttering open like gannet wings, carrying away words as he snatched at them, desperate to capture their knowledge. Tremaine rubbed his groggy eyes. Slurped coffee. His granny had loved the drivel of dreams; a Scotswoman who believed in second sight. Portents, she’d eerily claim, spouting dire warnings. She’d tried to fill his head with her fey rubbish. It had frightened him as a lad. Guzzling caffeine, he read Carlisle’s nightly crime report: thirteen drunk and disorderlies, five assaults, three criminal damages, two burglaries. The Inspector set aside the sheet, drained his mug. His spooky gran was wrong. There were no predictions or prophesies to be found in sleep. It was just nonsense cluttering his brain, leaving him exhausted. He hated ambiguous dreams. Life was cut-and-dried, made brittle by people’s foolish acts.

-- Excerpt from The Stars Prevail

​Poor DCI William Tremaine struggles with the uncertainty of second sight—the psychic ability of having prophetic visions. It is an added sensory skill believed to run in some Scottish families, uncontrolled experiences shared by people of diverse genders, ages, occupations, and religions. They often describe the imagery as quite real, not originating purely in the mind, and not limited to periods of sleep. Some of the visions are quick, 'film-like' pictures in the mind while others appear as highly focused three-dimensional images. Whether the emotional content is positive or negative, it is difficult to ignore and even more difficult to interpret, since symbolism reigns.

Lying down, the Inspector sought oblivion, an escape from the dirt and crime he faced every day. Instead, he was plagued with a half-witted dream. The cosmos wept tears wrung from the stars. Icy pellets of light, melted by moonbeams. He stood at cliff’s edge, the sea pounding furiously below. The barren branches of a hawthorn tree loomed over him, backlit by the stars. Its sparse leaves fell at his feet, the fading foliage etched with words. He gathered the leaves, arranging their gibberish into sentences, desperate to read their secret. A sudden foul wind snatched at his shabby collection, lifting leaves from the ground, swirling their sentiments around his feet before casting the leaves out to sea – knowledge lost. Pressing his meager harvest between the pages of a book, Tremaine hugged the text to his chest before the next gale could carry it away. The rains came. The galaxy grieved a deluge.

​-- Excerpt from The Tide Turns

​Every vision is a premonition of what lies around the corner. Whispered secrets that reveal little. A blessing, or a curse? It's hard to decide. If knowledge does not provide power, how useful is it? Perhaps we simply aren’t meant to prevent future events. Good or bad, fate comes to us all.