Lost Souls by Neil White

it comes true.’
    Sam started to twirl his pen between his fingers, a habit he had when he wasn’t sure what to say.
    ‘I paint them,’ Eric continued. ‘My dreams, I mean.’ He shifted in his seat. Sam didn’t say anything. He just looked at the old man, let him talk.
    ‘I’ve always painted, since I was a child,’ Eric carried on, leaning forward in his seat, ‘but then I started getting these dreams, strong, vivid, violent dreams.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I knew they meant something, but I didn’t know what.’ He shrugged. ‘So I started painting them.’ He sat back and smiled, a nervous smile. ‘I paint my dreams, and then they come true.’
    Sam tried not to smile with him. ‘What, you influence the future?’ He put his pen down. ‘I saw it in a film once. Richard Burton.
Medusa
something.’
    ‘No, no,’ Eric said, his eyes wide now. ‘You don’tunderstand.’ The old man took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead. ‘These aren’t normal dreams. These wake me up, and I’m crying sometimes. I know I’ve seen something terrible, something that will kill people, but I can’t do anything about it.’
    ‘What kind of things?’
    Eric began to clench his jaw, his eyes distant. ‘Disasters, murders. I’ve seen plane crashes, earthquakes, bombings. And I can’t do anything about it, because I don’t know when it’s going to happen, or where.’ He looked back at Sam, his eyes almost pleading. ‘Sometimes I’m too scared to go back to sleep. So I get up, no matter what time of night it is. I get up and paint my dreams. And then they come true.’ He wiped his eyes. They looked damp, his lip trembling. And I know all the time that I could have stopped it, if I’d just known more.’
    Eric looked at Sam expectantly, as if he suddenly thought that Sam might have an answer. But Sam had his mind on something else.
    ‘Why have you been following me today?’ asked Sam.
    Eric sat bolt upright and wiped his eyes, looking more focused. He reached into his coat pocket and produced a roll of paper. ‘I painted this a few months ago,’ he said.
    He passed it over, barely rising from his seat; Sam had to lean over the desk to get it.
    Sam unrolled it carefully. It wasn’t cheap paper. It felt thick, luxurious, not the glossy white of office paper. It seemed completely at odds with the man’s appearance.
    It wasn’t a painting as he expected it. It was more of a collection of jottings, of images. There was no structure, no form, but the images immediately got his interest.Sam could tell the old man had talent. The human figures were drawn with swift lines, almost scribbled, and the colours overran, but the figures had astonishing movement, action.
    It was the image in the middle that drew Sam’s attention. It came at him like a shot of adrenaline, recognisable straightaway. It was a woman, petite, young, tied to a chair. There was something hanging from her neck, like a rope, and her chest and face were painted bright red, with crosses over her eyes. Sam hadn’t seen the pictures from the scene of the murder, but he had heard Egan describe it over and over during the interview as he tried to rattle Luke.
    Sam looked up at the old man, who smiled, just a nervous flicker of his lips.
    Sam looked back at the picture.
    There was more in the picture, and when Sam saw his own name scrawled across the top corner he felt his chest tighten. There were two people painted underneath his name, standing in front of a statue, of some old Victorian dignitary on a six-foot plinth. Sam recognised it. It was a statue near the court. The faces of the people in front of the statue were empty, but Sam could tell it was two men from the width of the shoulders and the suits.
    Sam sat back and folded his arms. ‘What does this all mean?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Eric looked at Sam, his eyes wide. ‘Sometimes I don’t know until afterwards.’
    ‘Until after what?’ Sam was getting frustrated now.
    ‘Until after it