Empath

by Evans, S. Usher

  And how did she know that his wife was sick?

  "I think I'll…wear it out," Lauren said, knowing (again, how did she know) that if she put this necklace back, the man would be heartbroken.

  The entire place was giving her the creeps and she just wanted to get out of here before she started hearing more voices.

  "Excellent, excellent. That will be two hundred dollars."

  ***

  Lauren hustled down the street to make it back to work on time, arguing with herself about the merits of spending so much money on something so trivial. It was a pretty necklace, sure, but two hundred dollars was a lot of money.

  More perplexing was her strange feeling about the man, and knowing that she needed to purchase this necklace from him to make him happy. She'd always had an inner compass, a voice that told her the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, and how things would turn out. The voice told her it was time to break up with Josh, the one that had taken over on that terrible May morning after she'd ignored it for three months.

  The memory threatened to replay and she forced herself to stop as she slid into her desk just as the clock struck one in the afternoon. Instinctively, her hand flew to her phone to send a text message. She stopped herself just as she unlocked her phone. She and Josh used to text constantly during the day. Most of it was inane conversation—discussing the latest with his favorite football team, wisecracking lines from their favorite television shows—but it passed the time. He used to be the first person she told about everything, the only person interested in her boring little life.

  Just as in the club on Saturday night, her loneliness pulled at her like a sinking stone and the dark cloud returned. She hated herself for letting the darkness in, but at the same time, it was nice to let herself feel it. Faking happiness all the time was exhausting; even more so to attempt to fool herself.

  "Let me take your burden…"

  Lauren sat upright so fast her back cracked. She had just heard a voice, one much different than she'd ever heard. It was hissing and guttural, almost snake-like. And it sounded like it came from inside her mind.

  She paused, her ears searching the room for the sound of the voice. When it did not come again, she realized that she must have been imagining things. She turned her attention back to the numbers that beckoned her, and realized she had spent the entire morning moping and was now behind schedule. She placed her fingers on the keyboard and began to work.

  Look to the left screen, highlight the numbers, copy, paste in the right screen.

  Look to the left screen, highlight the numbers, copy, paste in the right screen.

  Look to the left screen, highlight the numbers, copy, paste in the right screen.

  The monotony put her into a trance, and her mind wandered again. She needed a vacation, she thought, continuing to move back and forth between the screens. Some time away from this place and these memories and the sadness. Maybe in a different place, she'd be able to move past everything without having to actually endure the pain of dealing with it.

  Or, maybe he'd just come back home and then she'd never have to deal with it.

  The tears began to gather behind her eyes and she looked up, trying her best to swallow them before they rolled down her cheeks. The truth of the matter was, she wanted him back and she didn't want him back. She was glad they didn't get married and she was angry with herself for ruining everything. The war in her head raged almost every day, and she was so tired of the battle.

  She just wanted it to be over already.

  "Give me your pain…"

  Lauren heard the voice again and this time stood up, and looked around. Everyone was still out to lunch, and she was the only one in this corner of the office, though she could hear the mumbled conversations of others nearby. Hastily, she wiped away her tears, hoping her face wasn't too red. She didn't want anyone at work to know she'd been crying; she didn't want to bother them with her problems. Hearts were broken every day, as the song went, and what she was going through was nothing compared to the woes of the world. Her mom had taught her to temper her emotions, to keep everything in check. "Is this a one or a ten?" she'd ask whenever Lauren got too emotional over something.

  "Suck it up, Dailey," she whispered to herself, scraping around her consciousness for the strength to get past this. She knew in two months, she'd be just fine. She'd be out, dating someone else, maybe the guy she was really supposed to be with. Perhaps she'd join one of those dating sites.

  Josh's voice floated into her head, voicing his opinion about online dating.

  She became angry with her mind for betraying her like this. Why couldn't it just play along and do as she wished? Why was it always bringing up memories or dragging her down a path of sadness?

  Again, she wished he would just disappear from her mind.

  "I will ease your pain…Let me take you away…There will be no more pain…"

  Closing her eyes, a tear rolled down her cheek. The voice in her head was no longer startling. Somehow, it made her feel like it had been there all along. And the idea that someone could just take away her pain…sounded lovely.

  "Will you let me take you away?"

  "Yes…"

  Something changed in the air.

  Her desk trembled under her fingertips, and for a moment, she thought it was a truck rumbling by. But it grew more intense, and things began falling from her desk shelf. Someone in the office screamed, "EARTHQUAKE!"

  The room darkened as the lights went out and the shaking grew to terrifying ferocity. Lauren gripped her desk, and looked up as ceiling tiles began falling around her. She ducked under her desk and held on, praying that the cheap plastic material would hold.

  From beneath the desk, she locked onto a pair of gleaming ruby eyes staring back at her.

  Then the world went black.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lauren immediately knew something was wrong.

  Everything was dark and dusty, and she could barely breathe.

  There was something very heavy on top of her, on the side of her, surrounding her.

  Everything rushed back to her as her brain re-calibrated.

  There was an earthquake, and she was at work, and she must have gotten knocked out by something. She was buried under a pile of rubble and concrete. When she realized she couldn’t move, she began to panic. She imagined herself beneath ten stories of collapsed building and could already see the headline when they dug her out in ten months.

  "HELP!" she screamed, her throat closing up in fear. She struggled against the rocks that surrounded her, realizing that she was unable to budge them an inch.

  "IS SOMEONE THERE?!" She tried to get a grip on herself. Maybe firefighters had already arrived; maybe everything was going to be all right. She remembered a TV show or movie that said panicking used up more oxygen, but if she didn't breathe, she was going to die. She pushed and clawed and scraped at whatever she could get her hands on, but nothing moved. She cursed herself for being so weak, for never going to the gym when she should have.

  "HELP ME!" she tried again, but this one came out as a sob. She was helpless, weak, and going to die under this rubble. She would never see her mom or dad or Josh again. She began to cry more, thinking about how distraught her mom would be when they found her body.

  "P-please," she sobbed. "Somebody please help me…I don't want to die…"

  Her breath caught when she heard the sound of rocks moving.

  "HELP!" Lauren screamed. "IS SOMEONE THERE!"

  "I'm here!" someone replied to her. "Hold on, I'll get you out!"

  Relief—glorious, beautiful, agonizing relief washed over her as a beam of light fell onto her face. The person was pulling the rocks off of her as fast as he could. With a heave, the last of the rocks disappeared from her vision. Cool air touched her face and she took a long breath in, as if it were the very first one she ever took.

  When she opened her eyes, that breath was sucked right back out of her when she came face to face
with one of the most handsome men she'd ever laid eyes on.

  "You're all right," he said, with a thousand-watt smile. "I'll get you out of here. You're a very lucky woman."

  Lauren wondered for a moment if she'd died and gone to heaven, but the pain in her body told her otherwise. She watched as he used his—dare she say—rippling muscles to pull the rocks off of her. Even though she had just nearly died, she couldn't quite look at him without feeling a blush rising to her face.

  "Silly girl, what were you doing up here anyway?" His voice sounded to Lauren like the laughter of angels. With a heave, the pressure on her legs lifted, and Lauren snuck a peak downward.

  Big mistake.

  When she saw how badly she was injured, pain shot up her mangled leg, and she whimpered, feeling sick.

  "We'll get you to a healer," Angel-man said, slipping his Herculean arms under her head and gently under her legs, lifting her out of the rubble.

  Who is this girl, and why is she up here—

  He laid her on the ground and disappeared from her vision for a moment. In her delirium, she wondered if she had misheard healer instead of doctor, because that would just be silly…

  She felt his hands slide underneath her, and she was suddenly wrapped up in thoughts that were not her own.

  She could have been killed by the Anghenfil. Why is she here?

  The panic and the adrenaline from nearly dying was too much, and Lauren felt dizzy, like the world was falling out of her hands.

  She seems to be convulsing. What if she's dying? I need to get her down to the village now.

  Down she fell, the voice in her head growing faint. Before she succumbed completely, she saw a pair of gleaming ruby red eyes staring down at her, and a hiss of anger.

  "It will be mine soon enough…"

  ***

  The pain was the first thing to register, followed by the smell of dust. She cracked her eyes and focused in the light, becoming aware of her surroundings.

  And aware that she was no longer in California.

  In fact, she was aware that she might no longer be in the twenty-first century.

  The walls were mud or something of that kind—definitely not drywall. The bed smelled and felt like it was stuffed with hay, not at all like her double-plush mattress in her bedroom. The floors were filthy, or maybe they were just dirt, and—

  She looked to the door, or rather the rag that was hanging in the opening of the room, as a small form walked through the door. Fire-red hair was the first thing Lauren noticed, followed by a pale face full of freckles, and a wool dress.

  "AY MA'M!" the girl called, sounding like she was Scottish or Irish or something definitely not American. "SHE'S AWAKE!"

  The shrill scream from the child made Lauren wince. Her leg throbbed, and she shifted to see if she could move it—

  A sharp pain shot through her and she cried out.

  "There'll be none of that now." A woman with waist-length dark red hair came bustling in through the rag on the door, carrying a bucket. "Your leg will need some time to heal."

  "Where am I?" Lauren choked out, looking up to see the woman squeezing water out of a washcloth and placing it on Lauren's head. The coolness was refreshing, and Lauren suddenly wondered when she'd see a shower again.

  "Our village," the older woman said, as if it were common knowledge. "What were you doing in the caves anyways?"

  "Caves?" Lauren said, as another cold wipe went across her face. "What caves?"

  "The ones in the mountain," the woman replied, again, as plain as if she were answering what day it was. "There was a cave-in. It's a good thing the watcher was up there chasing after a wayward goat or else we wouldn't have found you."

  The words made little sense to Lauren. "I wasn't in a cave, I was in my office, and there was an earthquake, and I woke up…buried under all that rock…"

  The woman paused in her ministrations and looked down at Lauren like she had three heads.

  "I'm not crazy," Lauren insisted, though she wondered if she might be. After all, she appeared to be hallucinating about a woman wearing medieval clothing in a mud hut.

  "Your leg had a nasty infection," the woman said as she put away the cloth. "Feverish. It just now broke." She placed her hand atop Lauren's head.

  I'm afraid of this stranger. Why is she saying such odd thing? What is an office and what is an earthquake? Cefin asked me to watch over her, but how long—

  The woman lifted her hand and Lauren let out a gasping breath, feeling like she'd just walked up a flight of stairs.

  "Something the matter?" the woman said.

  "You didn't just feel that?" Lauren asked, wondering if it was a smart thing to ask such a thing to a woman who already thought she was crazy. How did Lauren know that the woman thought she was crazy?

  Maybe Lauren was crazy. Oh God, what was happening to her?

  "You rest. I shall see about finding some more sleeping draft," the woman said, the nerves evident in her voice. She scurried out of the room as fast as she could, making sure to close the rags behind her.

  Lauren leaned back into the hay-covered bed and looked at the muddy ceiling. She had felt what the woman was feeling, or at least that's what it seemed like to Lauren. It was as if she were siphoning the woman's emotions.

  "Oh come on, Dailey, that's insanity," Lauren mumbled to herself. She was delirious probably. Most likely, she was in a coma in a hospital in California. This was nothing more than a coma-dream.

  "Ooooow," she whined, trying to move her leg again. If it were a drug-induced fantasy, it was a doozy of a hallucination, because she definitely felt that pain. She pushed herself upright and tossed off the covers, noticing that she was still in her dress pants and silk shirt she'd gone to work in, although they were dirty and ripped in places. It certainly looked like she had been buried in the rubble.

  Her left pant leg had been ripped clean off, and her leg was wrapped in thick bandages, covered in some kind of foul-smelling goop. Lauren poked at it, wishing suddenly that she had a Z-pak and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol to clean her wounds. She paid attention in history; she knew how many people died from infections in the old days.

  "You'd better not touch that." The fire-headed impish child was back, or wait…Lauren blinked. Now it was a boy. But the same face, same mop of curly red hair.

  "Er…" Lauren said, unsure if it would be rude to ask the kid if he/she was a he or a she. "What is this stuff?"

  "Healers put it on ya," he/she replied, circling the room. "Ma'm says you're a bit loopy; is that right?"

  "Sure," Lauren said. "When can I walk again?"

  "I danno. Ask the healers," he/she said, standing next to the table and poking at the water bucket his mother (Lauren guessed) had left behind.

  "Where are the doctors?" Lauren asked.

  "What's a doctor?"

  "Whoever did this," Lauren said, pointing at her leg.

  "Siors, he's out tending to some other folks," he said, leaning against the bed frame. "So…is it true yer a loon?"

  "EDWARD!"

  The imp straightened like a board and scurried out of the room as if the table he'd been leaning on had burst into flames. No sooner had he disappeared behind the curtain, than the mother walked back in, her eyes searching the room for her wayward son.

  "He just left," Lauren replied, still sitting up.

  The woman sniffed and walked over to check Lauren's bandages.

  "So…what's this stuff?" Lauren asked nervously.

  "Mud," the woman replied. "It will heal the bone and then the skin. It was blessed with magical properties."

  "Oh, well, of course," Lauren said, sounding a bit hysterical. Her broken leg was covered in bacteria-infested mud. If she didn't have an infection before, she sure was going to have one now.

  "Siors should be 'round in a bit." The woman patted her bandages. "He'll reapply the mud. Be a dear and try not to scream. Near woke the village last night."

  Lauren nodded and looked down at he
r leg, wondering how she'd look as an amputee—if she even survived. She desperately craved a shower. Was she far enough back in time when they believed baths were unhygienic? Because they could forget that mess. She was going to be clean, even if she had to dunk herself in the river.

  "I'm sorry about the twins," the woman said, after a moment.

  "I…wait…twins?" Lauren blinked.

  "Yes, Eddy and Mairwan," she tutted, bustling around the room. "They don't have anyone to play with but each other and they do get into mischief. And you, I'm afraid, they are quite curious about."

  "I'm curious about me too," Lauren muttered. "How did I even get here?"

  "Cefin brought you down."

  "Who?"

  "Ay, she's awake!" Angel-man was back and looking more handsome than ever. Lauren blushed as she took him in fully. He was tall, with a smooth handsome face and dark hair that was pulled into a low ponytail. His arms which had moved the rocks so easily were covered by a tunic-looking thing, which stretched across his broad chest. He resembled a male model and it kind of hurt to look at him.

  Lauren desperately wished to disappear or run away, but she was stuck on the bed in her ratty, dirty shirt and her torn pant leg and her smelly leg.

  "Cefin, Siors will be here soon. Don't be making too much of a fuss," the woman said as she bustled out of the room. She leaned into whisper something to him, and Lauren caught the words "hysterical" and "loony." He nodded, coming to sit on the bed next to her. The woman left the room, although Lauren rather wished she would stay so the handsome man wouldn't have her in his sights.

  "So…" Lauren mumbled like an idiot. "Thank you for…saving my life…"

  "Yes," he said, tilting his head to look at her. "And why were you up in the mountains anyway? How did you get past the watcher?"

  "I didn't…I mean…I don't know." Lauren shook her head.

  "Do you not remember?" he asked, reaching his hand to touch her forehead.

  No one should have passed me, and if Graves missed another shift, I'll kill him. We have a duty—

  Lauren heard herself suck in breath again and realized Cefin was staring at her.

  "Did I hurt you?" he asked.