by PM Drummond
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016
A Kindle Scout selection
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
DEDICATION
To W.E. Lynn, Jr., the greatest storyteller in the world.
Life has less color without you.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE BAD SIGNS
CHAPTER TWO CATS, SPATS, AND GLASS
CHAPTER THREE VOID ALLEY
CHAPTER FOUR BACK FROM OBLIVION
CHAPTER FIVE DECISIONS DECISIONS
CHAPTER SIX TIBBY FROM NOWHERE
CHAPTER SEVEN STUMBLE INN
CHAPTER EIGHT WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?
CHAPTER NINE THE ROAD BACK
CHAPTER TEN RETURN TO PERDITION
CHAPTER ELEVEN SUN BURN
CHAPTER TWELVE ALCATRAZ
CHAPTER THIRTEEN LABORATORY ANIMALS
CHAPTER FOURTEEN MOM
CHAPTER FIFTEEN TESTS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN ESCAPE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN HOME AGAIN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I give a universe of thanks and love to my husband,
Bob Drummond,
for his unending support and patience in being married to a “creative type” and author. He shares a house with not only a nature-loving writer/artist, but with all the stuff that accompanies those endeavors. Somehow his love for me has changed him from a “perfect-thirds towel folder” and “one-inch apart hanger spacer” into a shoulder shrugging, but sometimes eye-rolling, partner who only complains a little (usually when he trips over something or I bring another stray home). We are proof positive that not only do opposites sometimes attract, but they can make a long-lasting, dynamic, happy duo.
I’d also like to thank Brian Kaufman of Dark Silo Press for his editing and encouragement; the entire Kindle Scout team for their hard work and support; my sister Debby Waisanen for her love and faith in me; and Michael Slusser, Debra Claypool, and Rob Wilkins from Hot Shot Mountain Writers’ Group for their friendship and help to keep me on track.
If I didn’t list you, and you think I should have, please consider yourself acknowledged/thanked, and remember I space things out when I’m writing.
XOXO
CHAPTER ONE
BAD SIGNS
The pen wobbled, floating midair in front of my face. It was a bad sign. I hadn’t consciously willed the thing to rise, and it was dancing around like a drunk bridesmaid at a wedding reception.
I sat at my desk, my hands poised with indecision on the blotter. My boss, Carl, stood across the dingy basement office with his back to me as he rifled through file drawers and cussed under his breath. His middle-aged, fireplug frame vibrated with anger. I wondered, for the hundredth time, how his sweet little wife, Nancy, had put up with him for twenty-five years.
“I’ll show those executive idiots,” he said. “Tell me I don’t run my department right. Take it from me, Marlee Marie. No one has your back. Never forget that. You’re your own best advocate, especially around here.”
“More like my own worst enemy,” I mumbled.
Carl half turned toward me, making my pulse race and the pen spin like a gyroscope.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said, praying he wouldn’t turn all the way around.
I kept my eye on the pen and Carl at the same time, unsure of whether I should grab for it and risk drawing his attention or just keep sitting there and trying to will the thing to drop. The chaotic energy he threw off sizzled as it hit my skin, stinging like sparkler embers on the Fourth of July—except these embers melted into my skin and amped up the already dangerously high energy pulsing in my body.
Carl slammed a file drawer just as I reached out to grab the pen. I jumped. The Bic shot across the room and impaled itself in a file storage box two feet from Carl’s head. He flinched and scanned the room.
“What was that?” he asked.
I shrugged and turned to my computer.
“Don’t know,” I said, hoping to sound nonchalant. “Maybe that rat’s back in the walls again. Want me to call University Pest Control?”
He jerked open another drawer.
“No. That rat can eat the whole damn place. Hope it gives him the trots.”
A chime from my computer announced an instant message. I didn’t have to look to know the sender. Mike Williams from the Psychic Powers Chatroom was the only person who ever messaged me. I’d joined the chat room seven weeks ago, when my telekinesis had come out of its twenty-one-year dormancy, in an effort to find a way to get rid of my lifelong curse once and for all.
Mike was also the only person I could call a friend, even though I’d never met him face-to-face and never would, thanks to my parentally ingrained “Don’t tell anyone you’re a freak” rule. Okay, I was bending the rule a little. I told him about the freak part, but he would never know who I really was thanks to the magic of the Internet.
I pulled the keyboard toward me, made sure the monitor was turned so Carl couldn’t see it, clicked “Frizz’s IM,” Frizz because of my hair, and started typing.
MikeWill: hey frizz whats up
Frizz: Carls on his monthly rant & energy is way too high
MikeWill: Why too high
Frizz: dont know. been feeling like somebodys watching me or something bads going to happen
MikeWill: probably nothing. U b ok
Frizz: don’t think so. things flying everywhere. gets much higher afraid what will happen
MikeWill: u still worried about the cat
I touched the picture taped to my monitor of BooBoo Kitty lying on the back of my sofa, belly up, warming her fur with the sun. Sudden tears blurred my vision, and I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand before continuing to type.
Frizz: yeah still missing
MikeWill: maybe thats it
I didn’t think so. BooBoo had been gone just a few days, while the paranoia and crushing sense of foreboding had been building for weeks. My neck tingled just thinking about it. I cringed and darted a look at the wall behind me. There was nothing there but a large bright green moth. Dots on each of its lower wings looked like eyes, and when it fluttered, its pseudo-eyes blinked at me. Creepy. I shooed it away with a flick of my hand, and it flew toward the dark open maw of the storage room.
The computer screen on my desk snapped and flickered—another bad sign. I pushed my chair away from the desk and stood up before I shorted something out. The IT department was getting cranky about replacing electronic devices in my office. If I could just get out of the room long enough to uncharge a little, I’d be fine. My phone rang, and out of habit, I answered it rather than making my escape.
“Marlee Burns, Orange County University Records, Assets, and Archive, how may I help you?”
“Are you the lady with the lost cat?” a raspy male voice asked.
“Yes, yes, I am. Have you found her?”
My heart beat double-time. I tucked the phone on my shoulder and slammed my hands on several items rising off my desk. Carl glared over at me, and I smiled at him with what I hoped was an innocent “who me?” look. It worked. He turned back around and continued banging drawers and abusing papers.
“I have the cat. Your home
phone message said to call this number.”
My shaking knees gave way and dumped me back into my chair.
“Right, oh my gosh. Thank you. She’s been missing for two days. Who am I speaking to?”
The tingle in my neck increased, vibrating the base of my skull. Hair rose on my nape, and I glanced behind me again. The empty wall mocked my paranoia.
“Smith. Bob Smith. Listen, I’m in a little bit of a rush here. I can bring the cat by your place after five today. Just give me the time and address.”
The tingle intensified. I chalked it up to nerves.
“It’s 2554 Alice Lane, but I won’t be able to get home till about six fifteen. I get off at six, but I only live about a mile away. I have a class at seven, but I can be late if I need to.” I shut up long enough to roll my eyes. I was such a babbler when I was nervous.
I gave up holding things down on my desk and shoved them into a drawer to keep them from waving around in front of my face.
“Right,” Mr. Smith said, “see you at six-thirty.”
The line went dead. I looked at the receiver. He wasn’t much of a talker. I hung up the phone. When I lifted my hand from the handset, the tingling in my neck stopped. When I put my fingertips back on the phone, the tingle resumed, but it was fainter. It gave me what Grandma used to call “heebie-jeebies,” but I didn’t have time to analyze it.
I felt Carl glaring a hole into me and made the mistake of looking up. It seemed to give him the idea that I needed his input on the situation.
“You just gave your address to a complete stranger, didn’t you, Marlee?” He shook his head, causing a scraggly piece of graying hair to fall into his eyes.
“Yeah, but I’d do anything to get BooBoo back.”
“That’s asinine. What are you five-five and one-twenty?”
“Five-nine and one-thirty-ish, but—”
“You’re defenseless, alone in that house. Don’t know why your grandma willed it to a single, twenty-six-year-old girl. This guy could be a serial killer. You should’ve let the damn cat stay lost. The world would be better off without animals mucking up the works.”
He waited for an answer. I couldn’t think of a reply, so I stupidly said the first thing that came to mind, “Without animals, what would we eat for meat?”
Carl’s eyes narrowed, and his voice grated, “How about one each other?”
I grabbed a rubber band off my desk and fastened my rising waist-length hair into a frizzy black ponytail. If he noticed my hair suddenly lifting and crackling, he didn’t let it show before he stormed out of the office and slammed the door.
I turned back to my computer and was shocked to see my reflection in the monitor’s glass. My normally medium-green eyes shone bright green, almost glowing. Oh joy, a new side effect of my social-life mangling abilities. I wiggled my mouse to turn the screen saver off and block my reflection, then typed goodbye to Mike and got to work inputting scanning requests for the next batch of university records going to the document imaging company. Before I knew it, it was time to leave.
“Good,” I said. “I can finally get out of here.”
I talk to myself a lot. I answer myself, too. I’ve heard that may be something to worry about. Yeah right, I’d add it to the list.
I grabbed my things and rushed to my 1959 Chrysler Imperial in the parking lot. As soon as its long, red body, huge chrome bumpers, fake tire on the trunk, and pointy tail fins came into view, my heart did a little happy dance, and my shoulders ratcheted down a notch. My grandfather bought the mammoth car new off the showroom floor for my grandmother. Over the years, it had broken down to the point where auto mechanics said it was hopeless, but my grandfather would always bring the old bucket of bolts back to the living. These many resurrections earned the car the family nickname, The Jesus Chrysler, or JC for short.
The pastor at my grandmother’s church had used the car in a sermon once, saying if a machine could have the perseverance and reliability of our savior then the rest of us should be able to follow suit. It hadn’t broken down in the five years since my grandfather died, which was more than I could say for myself—especially today.
With a double-scoop of doom still consuming me, I backed out and sped as fast as the JC would go to meet Mr. Smith.
CHAPTER TWO
CATS, SPATS, AND GLASS
My neck tingled again when the JC and I were about a block from my house. The sensation intensified until by the time I pulled into my driveway, it seemed like a hill of ants had taken up residence on my neck. I shut the car off and closed my eyes. My body tensed in a flight response, but where was the danger? I sighed and rubbed my neck. There was no danger. I was short-circuiting somehow, my energy more out of control than ever with every day bringing me closer and closer to self-destruction.
I yanked the handle and shoved my shoulder into the car door to pop it open. The Jesus Chrysler still ran, but it was a little creaky in the joints. As soon as I was in the house with the door closed and locked, I felt a little better.
This house had always been the one place I could be myself without fear or shame. It’d been my maternal grandparents’ home, and it was strange that I felt I could be myself here since they supposedly didn’t know about my special abilities. I suspected Grandma had known, though. Our family just hadn’t talked about it, like a crazy aunt locked in the attic that everyone ignored. An embarrassment pretended away even when the bumps and moans drowned out normal living.
Framed pictures of Grandma and Grandpa lined the fireplace mantle. I said hello to them as I flicked on the light.
My suspicions of Grandma’s shared complicity came from dozens of conversations I’d walked in on between Grandma and my mother when they’d stop talking and look away from each other. Unspoken words would hang in the air, clouding the light and loving feeling my grandmother filled a room with just by being in it. And there were the sad looks she would give me after my mother sequestered me here when my telekinesis and I had finally pushed my father past his breaking point. I think she’d known and that’s why she left me the house—a permanent sanctuary from my father. But, unfortunately, as it turned out, not from myself.
I tossed my backpack onto the couch and kicked off my shoes on the way to the kitchen for some Gatorade. I’d found that sports drinks helped on high energy days. Electrolytes go fast when you’re a human rechargeable battery. Halfway through my third glass, someone knocked on the back kitchen door.
“Yoo-hoo, Marlee,” my neighbor Mrs. Norris said, with her wrinkled face pressed against the kitchen door window.
I checked the impulse to roll my eyes and opened the door. This could prove to be a disaster. I was in a hurry to get my cat and get to school, and Mrs. Norris tended to hang around. And talk. And snoop.
“Hi, Mrs. Norris,” I said.
“Hello, sweetie.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek, and instant guilt for my impatience bombarded me. Mrs. Norris had been wonderful to me since my grandmother died six months ago. She checked on me frequently, saying that she’d promised my grandmother she’d look after me if anything ever happened to her.
“I noticed that you’re home. You have class tonight, don’t you? You’re not ditching, are you?” She smiled and eased herself into a kitchen chair.
“No, not ditching. Someone found BooBoo Kitty. He’s returning her to me here, and then I’ll be on my way to class.”
She tssked me. “Marlee Marie Burns, tell me you did not give your address to a total stranger.”
I finished my Gatorade and tried to suppress another power surge. “Sorry, Mrs. N, afraid so.”
“Marlee!”
“I figured he returns lost cats, how bad could he be?”
“Marlee, Sweetie, I think maybe you being home schooled made you a little naïve to how bad people can really be. The real world isn’t like those old reruns you grew up watching.”
Well, it was hard to go to school when you might launch one of your classmates across the room at the least
provocation. And those reruns were my best friends growing up. I even named BooBoo Kitty after a stuffed animal in Laverne and Shirley. It was either BooBoo or Hassenfeffer Incorporated, and that was a little awkward.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s broad daylight, and I knew you and Burt would be home.”
I really didn’t know that, but it sounded good. For old retired people, Kay and Burt were very active.
She straightened my salt and pepper shakers on the table and brushed a few crumbs from Grandma’s gingham placemat.
“Still. A young girl like you should be more careful. I promised your grandmother, bless her soul, that I’d watch after you. You’re not making it easy.” Her eyes snapped to mine, and she smiled. “Did he say if he was single?”
I did roll my eyes then. “Mrs. Norris, make up your mind. Is he a rapist or a potential husband? My standards are a little too high for him to be both.”
“Oh, Marlee. You’re so sassy.” She chuckled and looked out the window. “Still, I think I’ll hang around until he gets here. We’ve had a strange van lurking around the neighborhood. Mrs. Crenshaw, you know Mrs. Crenshaw don’t you, sweetie? She’s the president of the neighborhood watch. She reported the van in this morning’s community newsletter. Did you read it?”
I shook my head.
“Marlee, you need to pay attention to these things. You’re part of the neighborhood now, and you’re a young girl living alone. We’re all concerned for you.” She pointed to the kitchen door. “You need to get a solid door and put on some better locks, too. You know I can have my Burt come over and—”
A loud knock rattled the front door. I rubbed my suddenly tingling neck.
“Oops,” I said. “That must be Mr. Smith now.”
Remembering Mrs. Norris’s “Is he single?” crack, I checked myself in the magnetic mirror my grandmother had stuck on the fridge years ago during one of her diet phases. Mrs. Norris waved her hand at me.
“Oh, Marlee, you look like a dream. Just be yourself and you’ll be fine. Everyone would love you just like Burt and I do if you’d just open up a little more.”