Red Rainbow by G Johanson (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

father had identified this gift in her when she scrawled as a young child when she was learning to write. He spotted that she wrote before she could write, in many languages. She daydreamed while she doodled and words came out. She did this at school sometimes and got into serious trouble.

Her father explained it when she was older. Psychography. He talked to spirits and received their messages from beyond. Her ability had elements of this in that she received messages from beyond too. All she had to do was try and switch her brain off with pen in hand, to not think about what she was writing (she chose not to look), and messages from the dead came through. It was a useless ability, really, but it was one that didn’t dominate her life. She hadn’t done it for years – not intentionally, anyway. Now she was looking for help from any quarters.

She didn’t get much that first night. A racist came through which put her off trying any more for the night. According to the bigot, freedom gave her these problems, which she wouldn’t have were she in chains. No, she’d have much worse ones. She felt like putting her hand under the hot tap to punish it, but she’d just be punishing herself which would suit them. The words came from her hand, but they were not hers, and she’d not blame herself for their rotten attitudes. Good or bad, she was just the vessel.

Another one that annoyed her at the time fancied themselves as a joker. I can’t help you. I’m illiterate.

Patience found herself laughing about this one later in bed. What could she expect any of them to do for her, really? It was going to take an exceptional spirit to get her out of her current predicament. That one couldn’t help so instead tried to amuse her and succeeded, belatedly (though she was quite possibly delirious). The style of the handwriting scared her sometimes. There had been one in particular that came through on multiple occasions which seemed to be the handwriting of a serial killer, the messages strange too. She turned the lamp on and fetched the notebook and rechecked the notes, bar the racist one which she’d torn up.

I’ll get you out of this if you promise to kill Cecily Carlisle. She didn’t know who she (he?) was so that one was out. That spirit at least showed awareness that she was in the midst of a crisis. If the demand had been less than murder, she might have considered that.

Freaks all. Rope is the answer. Did they mean Florence? Her? It didn’t seem to fit the Nazis – there was plenty of other names to call them, freaks not the first insult that sprang to mind.

Florence looked away from the pad and let her hand run free. She got something, an address – in Paris too, that was a plus. Go to apartment 24, 10 St Jean Street in the second arrondissement and ask for the Love Phantom. Tell them of your gift. They’ll help you but you’ll have to help them too.

Patience tried again and got other messages, but nothing more from this one, the subsequent handwriting and languages different. The Love Phantom. Tell them of your gift. They’ll help you but you’ll have to help them too. A group or terrible grammar. The Love Phantom had to be an individual, but there was a group attached to him or her (probably him) too. She had so little to lose that she was going to go and track down a stranger called the Love Phantom in a bad part of town after blatant demonstrations of how hateful the messengers could be.

Chapter 6

The Love Phantom

“I have a visitor asking for the AF.”

Amor Fantôme. (The) Love Phantom. The Love Phantom took this call at work, the noise in the background revealing that his lover was calling from somewhere busy, probably the bar over the road from her apartment. Marcella knew to be discreet on the phone. She was far more candid in person, sometimes overly so, but she had been in the Resistance business longer than he had and he respected her survival instinct. It was much, much easier for him.

“I think you have the wrong number. I would advise, if there is somebody at your house you don’t recognise, that you find somewhere safe to wait until a loved one can join you. I’m sure they would join you within an hour under those circumstances. Is there a café nearby you can wait at?” He could not have her wait at the same location she made the call at. The café would be better.

“Yes, as it happens. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not a problem. Good luck.” And take care. He knew it was Marcella as soon as he realised it wasn’t an internal transfer from his secretary. As the national director of the soft drink company Escolico, he received many calls each day, all of which were filtered through Fernande. He put his coat on and walked out of his office and told Fernande he had to step out for the rest of the day to seek inspiration – he asked her to put this better if the owners of the company or anyone from their circles phoned. The Love Phantom was planning an advertising campaign and was currently torn between a variation on a previous sexualised campaign that had gone done well domestically (less so when other markets followed his advice and tried it in more conservative regions, though the featured young lady was hardly indecent) or to prepare a campaign tied into the liberation they could almost smell coming. Creative and marketing were two of the favourite parts of his job, a job he had fallen into and fallen upward on the way. It had all been so easy and still was.

That was his life all over, though. Take Fernande Cartier. 24, traffic-stoppingly