Jane had grown up in a small town not far from the village where she now lived. Her father ran the local butcher's shop and the family lived in the flat above it. Theirs was an average family living an unremarkable life. Jane and her sister Claire were mostly happy, until her sister reached the age of eighteen.
Claire was a quiet girl who was not unattractive, but she was not going to turn heads. Jane was dating a man from the town who worked for the post office and they were heading, slowly, towards the altar. Claire felt a little left behind by her prettier sister and imagined that she would have to settle for someone who was nice, but a bit dull.
When Charlie swept into their lives, they had no idea how toxic he would be. The young man with the black hair and a glint in his eye looked so affable and yet. Jane had always been able to see an aura of some sort around people. That fact had not been shared with anyone else lest she sound like a madwoman. As soon as she set eyes on Charlie, she knew that there was something very wrong about him.
The auras that she saw ranged in colour. Jane didn't see them on everyone. They mostly reflected someone's emotional state. There were the joyful yellows, the contemplative blues and the fiery reds. When she saw Charlie, it was as if he was surrounded by a thick dark fog. There was no mistaking the meaning of this hue, it indicated that he was bad.
Charlie had already met her parents and they were rather enamoured of the polite young man. Claire was smitten and Jane had walked into a scene of happiness, but been unable to share their joy. Charlie looked at her and his smile faded. He somehow knew that his façade didn't work on her. The next look was pure malevolence. A threat.
What could she do? This man had charmed everyone and if she tried to speak against him it would get her nowhere. It would be useless trying to talk to Charlie, maybe dangerous, too, but Jane had to try.
"So, you know about me. Good luck in telling your sister and your parents. They won't believe you."
"What do you mean?" Jane asked.
"I've worked a little bit of magic on them. They like me and there is no way that you can change their opinion. I suggest you keep quiet. The only thing you'll achieve by speaking up, is putting a wedge between you and them."
"What do you want with Claire? Please don't hurt her."
"I won't do anything bad to her. She is my goodness."
Charlie's enigmatic reply had bewildered Jane. Whatever he said, she had to try to talk to Claire.
"I've never told anyone this, but, sometimes, when I look at people, I can see what they are like. It's as if they have a cloud around them. If the cloud is, say, yellow, that means that they are happy. Red means they are angry or fiery. Blue is sort of calm and collected." Jane explained
"You actually see colours?" Claire asked.
"Yes. I've grown up being able to do it. As a child, I thought that everyone could see the clouds. Now, I know they can't."
"What colour do you see when you look at me?"
"You, Claire, are a bright, almost golden, yellow. I can see what a good person you are."
"What about Charlie?"
"He is different from most people. I don't see a colour when I look at him. He is surrounded by a dark shadow. There is something bad about him. I know you can't see it and won't believe me, but I have to tell you what I see."
"Charlie is good looking and nice. You are stuck with boring Peter. You've always been the pretty one. The favourite. You can't stand that I now have someone better than you and you are determined to spoil it. All this talk of clouds and good and bad. You are not going to ruin this for me."
Charlie had enchanted Claire and her parents in some way and they trusted him. Jane felt impotent in the face of his power and could only watch as he convinced Claire to abandon her family and move in with him. Jane was only twenty and she had no idea how to fight back and save her sister.
The sisters exchanged pleasantries when they saw each other around town, but there was a coolness between them now. Claire informed her family that she and Charlie were moving away. She would keep in touch and would visit whenever she could. That was the last that they saw of their youngest daughter.
Jane married her man from the post office. Her and Peter were happy, but childless. Claire had disappeared from the town with Charlie and they had not heard from her since. At Christmas and on her birthday the family felt her loss acutely. Jane missed her every day and had asked everyone that she knew to keep an eye out for her. The police were not interested. She was over eighteen and had left of her own accord.
It was deeply frustrating to know that Claire was under the influence of a bad man, but to not be able to convince others of the fact. Telling the police that Charlie had a dark aura was not going to help. Jane did not want to be seen as either a nuisance or a maniac so she had to hold her tongue and make her own enquiries.
The search for her sister went on over the years. Jane now used the internet, she put adverts in local papers and every time a body of a young woman was discovered, her heart was in her mouth. So far, it had not been Claire. As the years had passed and no further information about her sister was found, things did not look good. There had been no bad news, but no trace of her either
Peter delivered the mail and this entailed early mornings and lots of walking. He should have been fit and healthy, but he suffered a massive stroke and died three weeks later. Jane was in her forties when her husband died. Her parents were in their seventies and were increasingly fragile. Soon she would be all alone.
When her mother died, a year after her father, she had moved to the village on the coast. Jane gave up her own career as a doctor's receptionist, after she had inherited money from her parents. She didn't have a fortune, but she had enough to be comfortable. No longer working, there was more time to devote to investigating the mystery of where her sister had gone and what Charlie was.