Shimmer: A Novel

by Passarella, John

  “Make them stop,” Thalia whispered. “Please? Sing ‘little star.’”

  Liana took a deep, tremulous breath and sang softly, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

  Chapter 4

  Laramie, Wyoming

  In darkness, Gideon Walker sat in a kitchen chair in his rancher, a tumbler half filled with scotch held in his hand, staring through the bay window into the night. Although he had excellent night vision, his gaze was unfocused at the moment, his attention turned inward. He’d made a life for himself here, far from all of them—he even owned a small construction business—but he still experienced days that made him feel as if he’d never left. Premonitions that all was not right in the world. Reminders that he’d once had a part to play in righting the wrongs, a role he’d abandoned when he realized the cost was too high and that he was no longer good enough. Being born to a job didn’t exclude the possibility of resigning. Free will, choices, all of it, told him to move on. He’d served his time, paid his price. He had nothing more to offer.

  His left hand rose to that side of his face, almost touching the furrowed scars that flowed from his forehead down to his neck… almost. No need for physical contact. He’d memorized every twisted runnel. For a moment, his fingers paused over the black cloth patch and the useless socket it concealed. The facial scars, while unpleasant, were basically superficial, but the missing eye was a real deficit. No amount of pride or self-esteem could overcome that loss. It had changed the shape and course of his life.

  Let others pick up the gauntlet, rush into the fray.

  He whispered into the darkness, his voice a grim rasp. “I did my time.”

  Nevertheless, he’d felt the old stirrings today. Something was coming. Something big. He’d cut himself off, but would never be completely free. Not without some radical form of gene therapy, a complete revision of his doomed DNA. The family had a young douser, somebody who sensed the trouble ahead. In contrast, Gideon sensed the aftershocks. Not a very useful talent by any stretch, but one likely to give him nightmares or toss his stomach.

  Can’t live with them, he thought in resignation, can’t live away from them.

  He leaned back in his chair and reached for the phone—a moment before it rang—an anticipatory response he’d stopped questioning a long time ago. It was part of the phenomenal reflexes ability he shared with his brother, Barrett. Instead of a greeting, Gideon said, “How did you get this number, old man?”

  “I don’t know,” the familiar, amusingly befuddled voice said. “Just came to me, I imagine. Were you expecting my call?”

  “Had a feeling,” Gideon said and stood. Never comfortable talking on the phone while sitting. Nervously, his free hand spread the stack of newspapers across the round oak kitchen table. He’d folded each paper to the story of a missing or murdered child. Authorities had recovered three bodies, hideously mutilated. Two children were still missing. Gideon knew it was only a matter of time before they found the bodies. “Been one of those days.”

  “Quite,” Ambrose Walker said. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re awake.”

  “I recall asking you not to call me.”

  “Right,” Ambrose said and cleared his throat. “So you did. Ah, but desperate times call for long distance measures.”

  “It’s a big family, old man,” Gideon said. “Flip to the next card in your mental Rolodex.”

  Ambrose sighed. “Gideon, we have lost so many…”

  “I’m not lost,” Gideon said. “I have a new home.” He glanced around his Spartan surroundings. Utilitarian was the word for it. No plants, living or artificial. No framed photos or paintings adorned the walls. It was a house but not a home. A rest stop for the determined recluse, a way-station for the psychically weary. The only comfort of his Laramie home was distance, but looking down at the spread of newspapers, he had to admit that distance was relative. “I have a life here.”

  “So you do,” Ambrose said. “And I sincerely hope you continue to enjoy that life, Gideon. Please pardon my interruption.”

  With a soft click of disconnection, the conversation ended.

  Gently, Gideon lowered the cordless handset into the receiver, thinking of the unasked questions that had been swirling around his mind. “How’s Barrett?” They hadn’t spoken in months. “What’s the nature of the desperate situation?” “Have you called anyone else for help?” And, more importantly, “What happened today, Ambrose? What happened thousands of miles from here that made me want to vomit?”

  Gideon’s pride had muted those questions. He’d slipped into his defensive mechanisms, justifying his new life and his abandonment of the family. Ambrose’s soft words still rang in his ears. “I sincerely hope you continue to enjoy that life”

  One idea his father had drummed into Gideon during his training as a Walker child, an expression, came to mind, “far-reaching consequences.”

  Gideon whispered into the night, “How bad is it, Ambrose?”

  As he sipped his scotch, his hand trembled.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Don’t want to know. Don’t care.”

  Gideon looked down at the scattered newspaper articles and scanned the statements by the police and members of the task force. No suspects. FBI pursuing leads. One comment seemed to jump out at him. Two words. “Inhuman atrocities.”

  “God help me,” Gideon said as he slumped into his chair. “I don’t want to care anymore.”

  Chapter 5

  Hadenford, New Jersey

  “‘Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.’ What do you suppose Milton meant by that? Let’s hear from our new student, Logan Walker?”

  “Um…”

  “Stand, please, Mr. Walker.”

  With a sigh, Logan pushed back his chair and stood. Everyone in the class was looking at him, half of them smirking, waiting for the new kid to make an ass of himself. “I… uh…”

  “We’re studying Paradise Lost, Logan.” She stared at him over her reading glasses, which were one brisk nod away from tumbling off her pinched nose. “If that helps.”

  Scattered laughter. Logan felt his face turning red, which explained the brief nausea he’d experienced over his frozen waffle breakfast. In hindsight, he should have ditched school.

  “‘Better to reign in hell…’” Mrs. Claridge prompted. “What was Milton telling us?”

  Logan nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sympathetic face. Two rows over. Attractive girl, striking face, sheaf of black hair, jade green eyes. Something about her… he was breathless, a little weak in the knees, and not simply because of his pending embarrassment. He looked her way and their eyes met. She gave a slight nod, meant only for him and somehow that broke through his incipient panic. He faced Mrs. Claridge again and said the first thing that came to his mind. “Milton obviously never spent any time in hell.”

  More laughter, this time with him, not at him. Big difference. Logan felt the tension ease across his chest. Mrs. Claridge, however, was frowning at him. “And I suppose you have spent some time in hell, Mr. Walker?”

  “No…” Logan said. But I know some people who have.

  “Perhaps you’d like to spend some time in the principal’s office instead?”

  “I—don’t think that’s necessary, Mrs. Claridge.”

  “Then sit down,” she said. “Let’s hope your next opportunity to dazzle us results in a display of erudition rather than ignorance.”

  Logan slammed his locker shut on his battered English Lit textbook.

  “Ouch! Poor locker.”

  Startled, Logan looked to his right and there she was, not three feet away from him, wearing a black top with a floral design in silver thread, over green cargo pants, her elbow and hip leaning against the row of lockers. “Hey,” Logan said, finding himself a bit mesmerized by her jade green eyes.

  “Tough being the new guy?”

  “Tougher on the lockers, I guess.”

  She chuckled, a light airy sound. “In case you were wondering,
Mrs. Claridge does indeed have a stick up her ass.” Logan grinned. “If you believe the rumors, it’s actually a broomstick. And that’s where she parks it when she isn’t flying over town in her pointy black hat, cackling at the moon.”

  Logan laughed. “I’ll remember that next time she’s deep frying my ego in her cauldron.”

  “There you go,” she said with a smile and a wink. She straightened, clutching textbooks and spiral-bound notebooks to her chest. “Well, I’d better run before I’m late to government. Mr. Dinsmore is no party himself.”

  “Wait,” Logan said. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Didn’t throw it.” She spun on one heel and strolled away from him down the crowded hall with an exaggerated sway to her hips.

  Logan ran after her, noticed her smile as he caught up to her, and decided to press his luck. “C’mon,” he said. “You already know my name.”

  “Only because you were singled out for ridicule by the big C,” she said, giving him a playful rib poke with her elbow. “I prefer flying under the radar.”

  “Then you shouldn’t scribble your name on your notebook… Fallon.”

  She glanced down at the doodled notebook in question and frowned. “Ah, but that could be my girlfriend’s name?”

  “Is it?” Logan asked with a frown of his own. “I mean, are you a…?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that—right? And yes, it is. My name, that is. My secret’s out, but I have plenty more.”

  “Names?” Logan asked. “Or secrets?”

  “Yes,” she said and stopped outside a classroom. She gave a nod toward the number above the door. “This is my stop.”

  “Oh,” Logan said. “So… Fallon, I’ll see you around?”

  She smiled, brushing a stand of black hair away from her face and tucking it behind her right ear before responding. “I’m sure you will,” she said. “Unless you walk around with your eyes closed.”

  “Not usually.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be…?”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” Logan said, flipping through a pile of papers he’d stuffed into his five-subject notebook. “Physics or calculus or something. I’m sure I’ll hate it.”

  “After Claridge, you should be able to handle anything,” Fallon said. “Bye, now.”

  “Sure,” Logan said, backing away until he bumped into somebody and made a quick apology. “Well, see you… uh, I’ll be looking for… Yeah, I’d better go.”

  She laughed. “Yes.”

  Logan waited until she turned away and entered the classroom before digging out his forgotten schedule. Whatever class he had next, he wasn’t looking forward to it. He had a feeling his attention would remain focused on Fallon for quite some time. Something about her intrigued him. Sure, she was attractive and she put him at ease, even while rattling his cage and tying his tongue in knots, but… there was more to it than that. Definitely more.

  Chapter 6

  Fallon took her usual seat in the back right corner of Dinsmore’s class. No assigned seats but most students ended up in the same spots regardless. The class bell had rung and Dinsmore, who Fallon suspected was a closet anarchist, was late as usual. Tuning out the low buzz of conversation in the crowded classroom, Fallon tapped her ballpoint pen against the cover of her government notebook. Thinking back on Logan’s discomfiture, she had to smile with a bit of satisfaction. Nice to know she could keep a guy off balance when she set her mind to it. Yet there had been something more to their encounter, something tugging at her subconscious.

  “Well…?” Sadie Bennett said from her usual unassigned seat at Fallon’s left. Sadie was a cheerful and mischievous redhead with a pixie haircut, pale blue eyes verging on gray and a perky, up-tilted nose that was a sweet sixteen birthday present from her father, post-divorce naturally. “Who was he?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Cute guy in the hall,” Sadie prompted. “Deer-in-the-headlights vibe.”

  “Oh…”

  “Right,” Sadie said. “But is he an ‘oh, no’ or an ‘oh, my’?”

  “Oh—maybe,” Fallon said, shrugging noncommittally. “New blood. Transfer student.”

  “Want my advice?” Sadie asked but didn’t wait for a reply. “Play out the line, let him tire himself out, then reel him in.”

  Fallon sighed. While there was no arguing with Sadie’s overactive libido, Fallon couldn’t resist the challenge. “Who says I’m fishing?”

  “Oh, you’re fishing, girl,” Sadie said. “I recognize the dreamy look in your eyes.”

  Something clicked. “Thanks, Sadie.”

  “For what?”

  “Never mind,” Fallon muttered. She shuffled through her notebooks until she found the one with the doodle-ridden cover, her dream journal. Flipping through the pages of dated descriptions and sketches, she almost passed a page featuring a smudged pencil portrait. Though her finest artwork might never grace a museum exhibit, she could capture a likeness now and then when she set herself to the task. Her memory of the dream had faded, but a single image had remained. Her breath caught in her throat. There was no mistaking the face looking up at her from the page. “Logan.”

  “Whoa,” Sadie said, after taking a peek over Fallon’s forearm. “Freaky.”

  Fallon jumped at the sound of Dinsmore dropping his battered briefcase on his desk. “Good afternoon, citizens!” he declared in his booming voice, eliciting a dozen mumbled replies.

  Fallon closed her dream journal and opened her government notebook again, flipping to the next blank page. As Dinsmore began to scrawl notes on the blackboard in his trademark chicken scratch, Fallon glanced down at the ballpoint pen clutched in her white-knuckled grip and couldn’t stop her hand from trembling.

  “What was that notebook?” Sadie asked, her voice a taut whisper.

  “Dream journal.”

  “You said he was new, so how could you…?”

  Fallon shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  A half-truth, at best. She’d had similar experiences dating back to junior high. But nothing so… blatant. Though she still worried that she would end up like her mother, the dream journal had been an attempt to codify her dream experiences, to gain a measure of control over coincidences that frightened her, to cling to her rational side and preserve her sanity. Now she felt her hold slipping, her mental balance teetering at the edge of an abyss.

  She whispered to herself, “Who are you, Logan Walker?”

  Excellent question, but did she really want to know the answer?

  Chapter 7

  Heaving a prolonged sigh of relief at the school day’s end, Logan passed through Hadenford Regional High School’s front entrance and descended the wide, staggered concrete steps with his backpack slung over one shoulder. With the heavy glass doors flung open, the school seemed to expel the jostling mass of students, as if no longer able to contain the pressure they had created, an idea seemingly supported by the extensive network of spider web cracks eroding the stairs.

  Logan managed to slip free of the mass exodus with a series of judiciously timed sidesteps. All he wanted was a few moments to absorb the welcome afternoon sunshine before climbing on the crowded bus for the long ride home.

  “Care to explain this?”

  The voice was familiar, but Logan needed a moment to locate her, perched on the low concrete wall to his right. As soon as she had his attention, she tossed a notebook at him. Not a notebook, he discovered, more like a sketch pad or an unlined journal. He looked at the open page and frowned. “I’m… flattered.”

  “Don’t be,” Fallon said. She hopped down beside him and brushed off the seat of her cargo pants. “It’s not you.”

  “Too bad,” he said with a slight nod, “it’s a good likeness.”

  “I met you today, Logan,” she said before jabbing the page with her index finger. “I drew that portrait two weeks ago.”

  Logan sighed before continuing down the steps. He shoo
k his head. “Should have seen this coming.”

  She caught his arm, confused. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “How could you know about this?”

  “I didn’t,” he admitted. “Well, not specifically this. Look, it’s a long story and my bus is about to leave. Can we talk about this some other—?”

  She was shaking her head. “Let’s take the long way home.”

  “What are you talking about? I live—”

  “Three, maybe four miles away max, right?”

  “About—”

  “You’re young. No infirmities?”

  “No…”

  “Good,” she said with a vigorous nod. “So, healthy walk. Long story. No sweat.”

  Suddenly the prospect of a crowded, noisy bus seemed downright enticing to Logan. As the bus driver pushed the lever to close the folding door, Logan sighed and turned to Fallon. “Okay, we’ll walk.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Fallon said. “Let’s go.”

  She set a brisk pace, striding along the horseshoe-shaped sidewalk that wound away from the school’s entrance, harboring no doubt he would follow her. With a shrug, he sprinted to close the distance between them and fell in step beside her.

  Smiling, she slipped her backpack off her shoulder and passed him the strap. “Carry this for me, won’t you?”

  “Hey, this was your idea,” he reminded her. “Why should I—?”

  “You said you were spry.”

  “No, I—”

  “It was implied,” she interrupted, flashing him a mischievous grin. “Besides, chivalry’s due for a comeback. Join the revolution.”

  With each long stride, the backpacks slammed against his ribs with the bruising regularity of punches from a weary but determined boxer. Other than Logan’s occasional grunts of discomfort, silence fell between them. He was in no hurry to explain his earlier comments, and maybe Fallon, despite her initial bravado, wasn’t quite ready to hear what he had to say. Long after the fleet of yellow school buses had disappeared down the narrow streets of the neighboring developments and their gritty exhaust fumes had dissipated on the warm humid breeze, Fallon crossed her arms and glanced over at him. “It’s basic physics, you know.”