Glimpse

by Steve Whibley

  When you’re a kid who doesn’t get an allowance, the lure of a free giveaway is kind of hard to ignore. Plus, what if the cosmos were rewarding me for risking my life? If so, I wasn’t going to argue. And if that reward came in the form of some cool—and free—electronic device, all the better.

  Determined, I cinched the straps of my backpack and pushed, ducked, and shimmied my way past one person after the next, buffeted back and forth until I stood at the front, my face inches from the double-wide glass doors.

  Displays, advertisements, and colorful boxes covered with blinking lights lined the aisles and dangled from the ceiling. A handful of employees scuttled around, doing some last-minute shelf stocking.

  “What time is it?” a woman asked over my shoulder. “It should be open now, shouldn’t it?”

  “Hey! Stop pushing,” another voice said.

  “Ouch!”

  “Get off my foot!”

  “C’mon already, open the doors.”

  The crowd pressed forward as an employee wearing a dark blue smock approached the doors from inside. He smiled, gave an excited wave, and inserted a key into the lock. Then he looked down at his watch and silently mouthed down the final ten seconds.

  As soon as the key clicked, the crowd surged. But the automatic doors didn’t open quickly enough. My shoulder caught the edge as I was shoved through, and I staggered to regain my footing only to get slammed against the floor. I managed to pull myself to the side before I was pulverized to lunchmeat.

  Great, I thought. I survive a couple muggers only to be killed by a mob of bargain hunters.

  A foot caught me in the ribs. As I started coughing, an arm reached around my chest, heaved me to my feet, and yanked me through the mob, away from the entrance.

  “Jeez, kid, whaddaya think you were doing down there?”

  “G… getting trampled, m… mostly,” I gasped, rubbing the side of my chest. “Thanks for helping me,” I managed.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the crowd. He wore a green Gadget Emporium golf shirt that was ripped and stretched, and he had a few scratches on his arms. I probably wasn’t the first person he’d fished out of the mob.

  A heavyset woman came barreling out of nowhere, and we both leaped back as she dove into a videogame display next to us. She emerged from the twisted cardboard a moment later with a triumphant scream and a copy of Bounty Hunter III clutched in her hands.

  “What is wrong with these people?” I wheezed.

  “When there’s free stuff to be had, people go nuts,” the guy said. “Are you gonna be all right?” He grimaced when I turned to him. “Ouch. You don’t look so good.” He gestured to my T-shirt. “Is that your blood? Do you want me to call someone for you?” He pulled out a cell phone from his pocket.

  “Blood?” I glanced down at the spatter across my shirt, shivering as I remembered the man in the alley. “I’m fine. It’s not my blood.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Really. I’m not too hurt.”

  Another wave of shoppers closed in on the display. I dove left and he dove right. I heard a crash but thought it best not to waste time looking back. So much for the cosmos. I slid around the outer wall of the store until I ducked through a side exit.

  Chapter 3

  I groaned when I saw Mom’s silver Volvo parked in the driveway and Dad’s Jeep sitting behind it. I guess it was a bit much to expect she would’ve trusted that I was fine.

  I trudged through the door and dropped my bag in the foyer. “I’m home!”

  “Dean?” My mom’s voice came from the kitchen, but my dad rounded the corner first. As soon as he saw me, his mouth fell open and moved wordlessly. He seemed to be having a tough time speaking.

  “A… are you… look at your face,” he finally blurted. I winced. I must’ve been banged up when I hit the ground face-first.

  “Where is my little hero?” Uh oh. Mom pushed past my dad and, without missing a beat, screamed. “You said you were fine!” With what seemed like superhuman speed, she was next to me with my face in her hands, turning my head one way, then the next. “You said they didn’t hit you, Dean. Your face is all bruised up!”

  “Mom, it’s not what you think. Let me explain.”

  “What’s this?” She grabbed my shirt. “Is that—”

  “Mom, it’s not my blood.”

  “B… blood.” The color drained from her face and her eyes rolled back as she slumped over. My dad must’ve seen it coming because he caught her before her knees buckled and lowered her to the floor. Yup. She was unconscious.

  “Are you okay, son?”

  I didn’t have a chance to answer him. The vision—the first sign of my newly cursed state—couldn’t have come at a less opportune time, but I think the universe has a really sick sense of humor sometimes, so of course that’s exactly when it did come. My dad had barely finished his sentence when all the color suddenly drained from around me. The foyer walls, my dad’s face, his clothing, everything simply muted to shades of gray, as if I had suddenly developed a special strain of colorblindness. I blinked rapidly, expecting the color to return. It didn’t. Instead, a woman I was sure I’d never seen before appeared to my left.

  At first, I thought my parents had company. I glanced at my dad and then back at her. I was about to say “Hello” and apologize for my mom when my sanity got a real kick in the biscuits. The woman seemed confused at first, but then her furrowed brow relaxed and her lips parted slightly, then a bit more. Soon they were curling back farther than lips were supposed to curl back. She dropped one shoulder while the other rose and shuffled forward a step, and then her body twisted more and more until she resembled a crumpled version of the letter S. I cringed at the sight of her, but I practically leaped into the air when she started screaming. Not an excited scream, like the one you might hear at a concert or on a roller coaster. No, this was the kind of scream that freezes blood, sends shivers up your spine, makes you pee your pants, and leaves one word pounding against the inside of your head: Death.

  I staggered back in horror, caught my foot on my unconscious mother’s head, and toppled to the floor. Then, as quickly as the strange woman had appeared, she was gone. The color melted back into the walls. For some reason, I could still hear her shrill scream, and it wasn’t until I ran out of breath that I realized I was the one screaming. I scuttled back like a crab until my back hit the wall. “D… dad!” I gasped and pointed to where the woman had been standing. “W… what… w… who was that!”

  You should know that my dad’s a psychologist. He started his career in mental hospitals for the criminally insane, and when he figured he’d seen it all, he accepted a job at the university. So nothing freaks him out. Seriously. Nothing. I could go out and kill the neighbor’s dog, skin it, and wear its head as a hat, and he’d calmly call it a phase. Okay, maybe he’d worry a little, but you get the idea. His expression was permanently fixed at cool and collected. But when I looked at him now, his eyes were the size of tombstones and his mouth gaped. Which is how I probably looked when I saw the woman. Except instead of focusing on where the woman had been, Dad’s attention was on me.

  He blinked twice before he shut his mouth and gave his head a quick shake. “What did you see, son?” He seemed to strain to keep his voice on an even keel.

  “Th… that w… woman,” I shouted. “You didn’t see her? Y… you didn’t h… hear her?”

  Dad swallowed. “Did she tell you to do something, Dean?”

  “W… what?” I looked from the void where the woman had been standing to my dad. “You didn’t hear her screaming? You didn’t see how twisted up she was?”

  Dad gave an approving nod as if everything suddenly made perfect sense. He brushed his hands down the front of his shirt and straightened his tie, and just like that, his unsettled expression was gone. “Stand up, son.”

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I stared helplessly at my dad.

  He walked over to m
e and helped me to my feet. My whole body shook. “It’s okay, Dean. It’s called PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I see it all the time in people who live through traumatic incidents: soldiers, people who have survived disasters, and quite often, people who have witnessed attacks.”

  “What are you saying? You think I imagined that woman?”

  He hesitated and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder as a flash of concern played across his face. “Hey, hey, don’t worry. It’s entirely normal, son. Sometimes PTSD manifests itself as hallucinations, auditory and visual, sometimes just as general anxiety. Don’t worry. We can get past this easily.”

  “That was no hallucination,” I insisted. “No way. That was something else.”

  “Dean.” He leaned forward until our eyes were at the same level. “There was nothing there.”

  I glanced back at the floor. My mom shuffled into a sitting position and looked around the room, blinking.

  “Welcome back, hon,” Dad said. “Feeling better?”

  My mom blinked some more. “I heard a scream. What happened?”

  I shrugged.

  “You should get changed, Dean,” Dad said as he helped Mom up. “But come back down right after. We should talk some more.” I started up the stairs as my dad added, “Don’t worry, son. What you’re experiencing is entirely normal and you’ll be just fine.”

  Normal?

  Screaming, twisted women who appear out of nowhere are normal? I think not.

  Unfortunately for me, it turned out I was right.

  Chapter 4

  Thanks to my shaking hands and the fact that every creak and groan from the house made me jump, it took a while to change my clothes. But by the time I got downstairs, I had started to feel a bit silly about the whole thing. Of course it was stress, I decided. Though I figured it was more from getting trampled at the electronics store than anything else. My parents sat me at the kitchen table and grilled me for what felt like hours, but finally they were satisfied I was okay. My dad even believed I’d be fine without counseling. “But you’re to keep me up to speed on how you’re feeling, Dean,” he insisted. “If I think you’re not coping well, I’ll want to set up some time with one of my colleagues. Got it?”

  After screaming in the foyer, I wasn’t in any position to defend my sanity. I agreed with a shrug, not really expecting that anything would come of it.

  Once Dad had calmed down about my mental state, Mom insisted I see a doctor for my injuries. Immediately.

  So we spent the rest of the day in the ER. We waited three hours to be told what I could have guessed on my own. I had a bruise on my rib and some cuts on my face, but other than being shaken up a bit, I was fine. “You did good today, Dean,” Mom said when we pulled back into the driveway. “I’m proud of you for helping that man. A lot of people—a lot of adults—would have turned a blind eye.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” She was starting to tear up, so I got out of the car as quickly as my bruised rib would allow, which turned out to be painfully slow. My sister was sitting at the kitchen counter playing with something inside a shallow black box when we walked in. She saw my face and flashed a wicked grin.

  “Nice face. Dad said something about you getting beat up by a couple of girls behind a toy store or something? That’s rough.”

  “You’re funny.” I walked to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice. “Oh, yeah,” I added, “Mom told me to warn you not to touch anything metal for a while. She thinks you have enough static electricity in your hair that a spark might cause the whole house to explode.”

  Becky said something back to me, but I never heard her. I only saw her mouth moving. For the second time that day, the color drained from around me. My pulse quickened, and I couldn’t bring myself to swallow my mouthful of orange juice. I caught the slithering movement of something to my right and turned.

  A large man with thin, dark hair had appeared out of nowhere just behind Becky’s shoulder. She seemed entirely unaware he was there. Suddenly, the man’s face and posture deteriorated until he looked more like a zombie than a man. And that’s when he screamed. The orange juice sprayed from my mouth and nose, and the plastic cup bounced on the tiled floor. The man was gone before the cup bounced a second time, and a wave of color righted the world around me.

  I coughed and choked for several moments. When I finally looked back at Becky, she was white to the point of near transparency, and her eyes bulged. “W… what w… was that?” she asked.

  My heart surged. I knew I wasn’t crazy. “You saw it.” I pointed a shaking finger at my sister. “Don’t mess with me, Becky. Did you actually see him?”

  “H… him who?” she stuttered. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “That’s about how it felt,” I muttered. I took a couple of slow breaths and grabbed a damp cloth to wipe up the mess I’d made.

  “Are you… okay? What did you see?”

  I used the cloth to wipe away some of the juice from my clothes before looking back at my sister. She leaned in over the counter.

  “A man. He looked like a… I don’t know. Like a zombie.”

  “You saw a zombie?” Now she seemed to be on the verge of laughter.

  “Did I say that? I said he looked like a…” There was no point in continuing. Becky wasn’t going to believe anything I had to say. I tossed the cloth into the sink. “What do you care anyway?” I marched out of the kitchen and up the stairs, wincing with each step but refusing to let the pain slow me down. I didn’t stop until I slammed the door to my room behind me. I lowered myself onto my bed and pressed my palms against the sides of my head.

  What’s wrong with me? Am I going nuts?

  The same two questions rattled around in my head until finally, and with great relief, I fell asleep.

  I wish I could say that I stepped up, met this period of weirdness head-on, and worked through it. But I can’t. When I woke up the following morning, I stayed in bed until noon, and then I really only left the room so I could get some food. Becky gave me a pretty wide berth for the first time in my life, so that was good, but the way she looked at me made me feel even more like a freak.

  Colin and Lisa called—no doubt to see why I hadn’t been at school on Friday—but I didn’t take the calls. Instead, I let Saturday pass with as few human interactions as I could manage: an awkwardly long talk with my dad about facing my PTSD with confidence and a dozen or so intrusions from my mom. But when Sunday morning arrived, I felt almost entirely normal. No additional hallucinations, no world turning gray, nothing. I actually felt well enough to eat breakfast with everyone.

  “How are you feeling, Dean?” Dad asked. He looked up from the newspaper with a raised eyebrow.

  “Better,” I said truthfully. “I think this PTSD stuff might have run its course.”

  Dad looked doubtful, but nodded all the same. “I’m glad to hear it, son.”

  “Me too,” Becky added. “It took me over an hour to get all that orange juice out of my hair. I’d prefer it if that never happened again.”

  “How’s the bug collection coming along, Becky?” Dad asked.

  Becky beamed. “Great. I’m sure I’ll have the collection complete before camp, and it will probably be the best one too.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sweetheart,” Dad said, “but don’t rub it in the faces of your fellow campers. That’s not the best way to make friends.”

  “Dad,” Becky said, still smiling, “I’m not the kid you need to worry about when it comes to making friends.”

  My sister drove me nuts, but I felt better knowing that despite the hallucinations, she was treating me the way she always did. Still, I sensed something was wrong. There was a lingering nervousness, like everyone was trying really hard not to upset the crazy kid in the room. Not that I could blame them. If I saw one of them wig out the way I had, I’d probably go buy the straightjacket myself. If it had been my sister, I’d have paid double to make sure it had a few extra buckles and maybe a h
ood.

  Nah, I couldn’t blame them. But I was fine. Better. It’ll take one more day, I decided. Tomorrow things will go back to normal.

  I told myself that again when I was finishing up some homework later that evening, deliberately ignoring the little voice in my head going on about “wishful thinking.” Tomorrow. Everything will be better tomorrow.

  Chapter 5

  “Dean!”

  I popped awake at the sound of my mother’s voice and nearly fell out of my chair. I pulled at a piece of paper that was stuck to my face and realized I’d fallen asleep at my desk.

  “I can’t believe you’re not awake yet!” my mom shouted from the doorway. “You have to be at school in”—she paused to check her watch—“thirty minutes. Now you’re going to have to walk.”

  “W… what?” I blinked away the lingering confusion. I had somehow slept through my alarm too, which was beeping incessantly beside my empty bed. I dropped my head back down to the desk and exhaled. “What… what time is it?”

  “Late, Dean,” Mom said, pulling me up by my shoulders. “Very late.” She turned me to face her. “How are you? Do you feel okay? Well enough for school?”

  “I can’t miss school, Mom. I’ll fail my exams. Besides, I feel fine. Much better. I promise.”

  She rubbed her thumb under my eye. The sting reminded me that it was still black. “Well, you still look like you were beat up by a gang or something. You’re really going to be okay walking to school? If you’re nervous about it—”

  “Yes, Mom. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  I grabbed a clean shirt and ran to the bathroom to shower. When I finished, the house was empty. I checked my watch: 8:15. I’d have to run, but I’d make it. I swung open the door and just about peed my pants right there on the porch. At first I thought I was having another hallucination. The woman had pasty skin and stringy blond hair. Mascara had clumped her eyelashes together as if she had taped two frozen spiders above her eyes, and she had the same blank expression the other hallucinations had in the moments before they screamed.