Fire In The Mind: Leonard Wise Book 1 Read online

  Fire In The Mind: Doctor Wise Book 1

  Copyright ©2017 Arjay Lewis

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover Design: Marianne Nowicki, PremadeEbookCoverShop.com

  Interior Layout & Design: Fusion Creative Works, fusioncw.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1545504499

  ISBN-10: 1545504490

  Published by:

  Arjay Entertainment, Inc.

  474 South Main Street

  Phillipsburg NJ 08865

  “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”

  — Plutarch

  “I dream in fire but work in clay.”

  — Arthur Machen

  Dedication:

  To my wife, Debra,

  with whom all things

  are possible.

  prologue

  In the last ten minutes of his life, Philip Mishan stumbled down the street as he tried to run on legs that for too long had carried his bulk at nothing more than a trudging walk. Over fifty and very overweight, he panted as he gave the appearance of an out-of-shape executive who decided to jog to work in his best suit.

  He pushed his way along the fashionable shops of Upper Mountainview, New Jersey, and shoved open a glass door painted with PHILIP MISHAN, FINE JEWELRY. It almost shattered from the force of his thrust.

  Behind the counter, an attractive young woman, startled by noise, blurted out, “Mister Mishan! Are you all right?”

  “Got to… call the police,” he puffed as he loosened his tie, his voice strained. “That’s what I have to do… tell them… the whole… damn story.”

  “You’re flushed, Mr. Mishan,” the woman said.

  He looked at the girl, Wendy. At one time, he’d thought she was merely a frivolous young woman. But his partner informed him that he had no choice but to employ her. Soon after her arrival, he had learned to see the iron hidden under the velvet.

  All in all, it wasn’t too bad. She was nice to look at, like his jewelry. His last lover, Tomas, had been nice to look at as well. Pretty things were the focus of his life.

  But the handsome young man had expensive tastes, and Phillip had pushed his partner to make more money. A lot more money. When his partner didn’t respond fast enough, Phillip had made threats.

  That had been his undoing.

  “You’re sweating, Mr. Mishan,” Wendy said, her eyes growing wide with fear.

  “It’s hot in here,” he said. “A phone…I have to call…”

  Wendy reached behind the counter, extracted a cordless phone and held it out to him.

  He stumbled toward it. He felt dizzy and decided it was from running.

  “Are you having a heart attack?” Wendy asked, staring at his face as it became more and more red.

  “No, no,” he said as he yanked his jacket off, a beautiful Yves St. Laurent jacket in pale blue wool he’d bought years ago. “Damn it’s hot,” he said as he reached for the receiver in the girl’s hand.

  “Mister Mishan, your jacket!”

  He looked at the cloth and saw wisps of smoke rising from it. He stared at it, fought to rationalize what was happening.

  With a WHOOSH, the coat burst into flames.

  Mishan dropped it with a cry and stepped back aghast.

  “Oh my God!” shouted Wendy. “Stomp it out!”

  “The bastard!” Mishan yelled as he watched the coat burn. All at once he knew what the only explanation could be.

  He glanced about the store and realized how many flammable liquids were stored there. That’s when it occurred to Mishan that his partner had planned this.

  He knew the bastard had to be there. Had to see what he wrought. He turned to Wendy. “Oh God! I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get under a shower or into a tub…”

  Wendy looked at the burning coat and then at him as if he’d gone mad. “You can’t just let that—”

  “Get a fire extinguisher!” Mishan screamed. Then, all at once, he felt the presence. He looked out the plate glass window until his eyes found the one man he feared.

  There he stood across the street dressed all in black, with that annoying smirk on his face.

  “An extinguisher!” Philip Mishan repeated, but it was nothing more than a hollow whine. They were the last coherent words he would ever say.

  With another loud WHOOSH, his body was engulfed in flames. His clothes, skin, and hair were on fire. The air was filled with the stench of charred flesh. He screamed pathetically as Wendy backed away, unable to hear him over her own shrieks of terror.

  She turned and ran to the back exit of the store, slamming through the heavy metal door, just as the entire store became engulfed in flames.

  On the street, a crowd formed on the sidewalk opposite the store, as close as the billowing smoke and flames would allow. In the distance, fire sirens sounded just as the flames burst the plate glass window and began to lick at the brick facade. The inferno stretched its orange tongues up the rest of the three-story building.

  The man in black turned and wandered through the crowd, the smile still on his face. As the sirens of fire trucks approached, he strolled away in the opposite direction.

  one

  The wheels rattled and the train shook as it traversed the expansive bridge over the Delaware River. It click-clacked toward the end of three thousand miles as I crossed into New Jersey.

  My home state, I thought.

  Home.

  Never mind that it had been years since I’d been here, or even on this coast.

  I shifted my sore rear end in the uncomfortable seat and tried to squirm into a better position to no avail. My paralyzed right leg stuck out in its unbending glory, which forced me into one uncomfortable position.

  Taking the train was the slowest and most difficult way to travel. A bus would have been more direct, but for a trip that spanned days, I thought a train with a sleeping berth the better choice.

  My transportation had ricocheted me around the country: Los Angeles to Chicago—change trains; Chicago to Washington DC—change trains; and now the final trip north to New Jersey. If I had taken a plane, I might not have been able to find the space for my leg. And I definitely couldn’t have brought my cane.

  It’s not much to look at, a wooden stick with the head of a cobra at the top. It fits in my hand well and gives me the balance I occasionally need with my leg.

  Of course, airport security might have had a problem with the twenty-four-inch sword hidden within it.

  Like almost everything I currently possessed, it was a present from my friend, mentor, and the man who probably saved my life, Doctor Fritz Kohl. I needed a cane anyway, and he decided this one might prove useful in an emergency.

  Or to carve an extremely large steak.

  I looked out the window at the rolling hills, lush and green with the spring. It was a beautiful time to travel; it was neither too hot nor too cold, and the country burst with new life, new growth.

  My dissertation had recently been accepted at the Southern California University of Health Sciences. However, my only real interest for the last four years had been my work with Doctor Kohl as I devoured his teachings in parapsychology.

  Parapsychology—the study of phenomena that investigates mental abilities, extrasensory perception, and the like.

 
Seven years ago, I would have laughed at the idea of studying such pseudoscience or anything that spoke of the world of the invisible.

  Back then, I had just graduated summa cum laude from Johns Hopkins University Medical School, I was engaged to a beautiful woman, and both of us were about to start our residencies at the Rutgers Medical Center.

  Cathy…

  Her image flashed in my mind. Her short, blonde hair and lanky body with those surprising breasts.

  Cathy hanging upside-down in the twisted wreckage…

  I winced at that memory and then focused on my breath. I was on my own, without Doctor Kohl, and I needed to use the techniques he’d taught me to control my mind.

  I returned home a doctor—the thing my parents always wanted. Not the kind my famed neurosurgeon father would prefer, but a doctor nonetheless.

  I’d had my PhD for exactly one month.

  I’d been sober for twelve.

  Amazing that I had been able to study and even start the work on my dissertation while each evening was spent in a stupor.

  I watched the hills roll by, each mile was more and more familiar. I could see why I was drawn to face the past. At the end of the line would be my oldest friend, Jon Baines.

  Then, all at once, there was a buzz.

  Something’s wrong…

  It was so strong, I didn’t have to stop and analyze it at all. I sat up with my senses awake.

  A buzz is my personal code for a quick extrasensory insight, a flash of awareness, what might be termed precognition. Sometimes, it comes as a picture, occasionally as a sound or voice. This time, it was the feeling I needed to be someplace.

  With my cane, I pushed myself from my seat as if in a dream.

  I don’t always need the cane as I am not yet thirty and in good shape. I am strong enough from the exercises I was taught in physical therapy while recovering from the accident. But the cane does help me get up and down from a seat and, of course, on stairs.

  I’ve cultivated the professorial look, with my tweed jacket, short trimmed beard, and my long hair tied back in a ponytail. I like to think I have a hipster meets Freud look.

  I stepped out of my sleeper berth, basically a small room with a fold-down bed, seats, and a bathroom, and I went into the hall, where I was led to turn toward the dining car.

  Something’s wrong…

  Whatever attracted my extra senses pulled me in that direction.

  I have learned to trust this feeling. Not like when I first became aware of what I laughingly call my gifts, as Doctor Kohl always referred to my abilities. I’d always considered the unwanted impressions that bombard my mind as my curse.

  After all, the event that opened them got Cathy killed.

  Cathy hanging upside down in the wreckage…

  That thought stopped me for a moment, and there was a pain in my chest. I wanted to break down, as I had so many times over the years.

  Even worse, I wanted a drink. Just one little goddamn drink, that would make me forget my sore rear end, help my muscles relax, and shut off the endless flow of unwanted input.

  “My name is Leonard, and I am an alcoholic,” I recalled from my last Alcoholics Anonymous meeting before I started the journey.

  I know the real reason I didn’t take the plane. That cart with all those little bottles that would pass so close to me. So immediate, so available.

  No, no, I just had a momentary lapse. They told me in AA it would be like this.

  I cleared my mind and focused on the buzz to lead me, to point the way. I wanted to follow it, let it run me. Nice and simple, don’t think, just allow myself to be pulled. I’d know what it was all about when I got there. I just had to remain in the present moment.

  I stepped into the dining car, and everything looked perfectly normal. I paused when I couldn’t see anything unusual or wrong. Then I started to walk, slowly, and tried to see if anything caught my eye.

  Something about to happen…

  At first, I noticed nothing, and I wondered if it was a false alarm. But no, that was the rational part of my brain, and I have spent years learning to look past it. I trust these impressions, even if I don’t know their cause.

  As I looked around the room, I saw a couple sitting at a table having their meal. Down at the woman’s feet, right in the aisle, sat her purse. The bag appeared to glow with an inner light that pulled my eye.

  Watch…

  Everything moved in slow motion; the world around me and even my own motions seemed ponderous. My heartbeat boomed like a drum in my ears. I was in the midst of an event and compelled to be part of it.

  The purse was not in any way extraordinary, a large black leather bag open on the floor, but I saw the wallet that lay on top, in plain view.

  I slogged my way toward the purse as if I was swimming through mud.

  There was a man at the next table whose napkin fluttered to the floor like a dying bird. It landed scant inches from the open purse.

  Slowly, his hand went down to grab the napkin, and in one excruciatingly long movement, grasped the cloth and slipped into the purse, expertly extracting the wallet using the napkin as cover for the theft.

  I was in exactly the right position. I merely shifted my weight and in one movement, smacked his fingers with the rubber tip of my cane.

  The wallet fell languidly back into the purse, and all at once, the world sped up.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman who owned the purse said to me as she reached to pick up her bag. “Is my purse in your way?”

  “Thank you,” I said, not needing to share with her what happened. I heard no sound from the next table, but as I passed, I saw the man biting his lip and rubbing his sore hand. He was a fellow of average size, thin, and good-looking in a Bohemian way.

  Our eyes made momentary contact.

  He knows, flashed through his mind. In that meeting of our eyes, I got a glimpse, a gentle touch, of his thoughts. He was nervous, surprised that he’d been stopped. He was also angry that such a simple heist was foiled by my intervention.

  I broke eye contact and paused as if unsure of my destination for a moment, then I turned and headed back in the direction of my cabin. The raven-haired would-be thief gave me a sidelong glance as I went.

  I rocked back and forth to maintain my balance in the moving hallway. Once I got into the berth, I pulled the bed down from its folded position and lay down.

  Is that all I was called to do? I thought, annoyed. Stop a two-bit thief from pilfering some lady’s credit cards?

  I never asked for any of this. I never wanted it. What kind of huge cosmic joke gave me these insights and appointed me some ersatz champion? I didn’t want the job. These things came, and I wish they wouldn’t.

  Doctor Kohl had an expression for the entire phenomena of psychic ability. He referred to it as a “fire in the mind.”

  I burn with that fire, and I was damn tired of the heat.

  two

  At six o’clock, the train made one of its last stops before New York City, in the town of Mountainview, New Jersey.

  You would think the railroad authorities wouldn’t bother with such a sleepy burg since the population isn’t huge.

  The stop was necessitated by the advent of the prestigious Garden State University years ago. Due to its proximity, students come in from around the country and use trains as one of the major modes of transport.

  The sky was overcast, and it appeared that the sun had set early. In the dark and gray, I stepped slowly down the metal steps from the train and gingerly set myself on the ground. I had a thin raincoat on and my backpack. I’d traveled with Doctor Kohl to so many places—and for many of them I needed to bring essentials: sleeping bag, towels, even food. That’s because haunted houses and out-of-the-way locales were part of being an active parapsychological investigator.

 
; “You can’t do this vork in a lab,” I remember Fritz told me with his thick German accent. “That’s vat the mistake vas in the sixties ven they began to study ESP. They put people in a sterile environment and expected results. But I haff found that is is only out in the vorld that you can achieve actual results.”

  It had begun to rain. The heavy droplets fell in a steady rhythm that smacked my head and made a chill run down my spine. I wanted a drink even more. A nice cognac to warm my fingers and toes and make me forget about dead fiancées, thieves in dining cars, and old teachers.

  “Len!” I heard a boisterous voice bellow.

  The tall man, more leggy than my six feet four inches, galumphed up to me with all the excitement of large, friendly dog. He pulled me into a bear hug with such abandon, I was afraid I’d fall over, backpack and all, and lie helpless on the ground with my arms and legs waving uselessly like a rather large beetle.

  “Jon?” I gasped, as I tried to hold onto what little breath I had.

  “Who else?” he boomed in my ear. “Come on, the car is right over here.”

  He brought me along to a space where one of those large SUV’s stood waiting like a trained elephant one would ride in India. He released me from his jovial clutches long enough to open the tailgate.

  I took off my backpack and put the mass of cloth and metal into the open cargo space. I then moved to the passenger door and attempted to sit. The bucket seat was up close to the dashboard, but in a few moments, I found the controls and pushed it all the way back. Then I got my stiff right leg in, as well as the rest of me, and closed the door.

  “Sorry, I didn’t put that back,” Jon Baines said from the driver’s seat as he started the car. “Jenny rides with it all the way up.”

  “Jenny?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I told you I got married, right?”

  “Uh…no,” I said. To be honest, he hadn’t told me much at all. Two weeks ago, I had received a call from my old friend as I sat in my sparse California teaching assistant’s dorm room.