In the morning when she got dressed and left the hotel room, Greg Hamel was as cold as a dead fish, his penis still standing straight and erect. Sometime before dawn as she’d been having her way with him his heart had exploded. “Oh well,” Angelica said, giving the corpse one final cursory backward glance. “I could think of worse ways to die.”
Danielle Peterson woke soon after dawn. She got out of bed, pulled the drapes open and gazed out at the endless expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. The beach below was totally devoid of human activity. The world was so still that it seemed time must have stopped. A dark flood of premonition washed over her.
She shook it off and headed for the bathroom.
Naked, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and stretched like a cat, inspecting her small, lithe body. The dream of the night before was still vivid in her mind. She still could not quite believe it had happened, but realized as she was thinking these thoughts that there was a huge satisfied grin on her lips.
Danielle had never been particularly oversexed. Although she did enjoy sex, it was not first and foremost in her life as with so many of the women she knew. And she could not remember ever having experienced a ‘nocturnal orgasm’. Until last night, that is. She tried to put the experience out of her mind, but the effort was futile.
She slipped into the shower, making the last few minutes of it a cold one. After getting out, she put her makeup on. It didn’t take her long because Danielle’s natural beauty did not require much embellishment. A little dark eye shadow and mascara to offset her blondness. A touch of lipstick and that was that.
Danielle was a small woman—five two and barely one hundred pounds—with natural blonde hair that had just enough wave to give her the body she liked without perming it. She liked her hair long, but for work she usually wore it up in a French twist or sometimes pulled back in a braid. Her eyes were blue, large and expressive in a small oval face accentuated by high cheekbones, her nose small with a slight up-turn, her lips full, her teeth perfect. Grampy Joe had seen to that with countless visits to the dentist and orthodontist while she was growing up. He believed you could tell volumes about a person based on the condition of their teeth. Danielle was not at all certain of this but she was grateful that he had been diligent in seeing to her dental care.
Danielle returned to the bedroom where she dressed in jeans and a light cotton blouse. She did not bother to dry her hair on this morning, nor did she braid it or twist it up. Instead she simply combed it wet, certain that in this Florida heat it would be dry in five minutes or less.
She put the chamois wrapped object in her pocket and left her apartment. She took the elevator down to ground level, walking through the echoing basement of the condominium complex to her car, a bright red BMW, her one and only extravagance.
Grampy Joe’s memorial service wasn’t until two this afternoon so she decided to go to work for a few hours to try to get things organized in preparation for her journey. She had to stop and catch her breath when these thoughts struck her.
Journey?
It was true, damn it. She’d known it from the moment she’d touched the object. It was as if it had been waiting there in that hidden cubby all these years for her to find, and now her true destiny, her true purpose in life had finally been cemented.
She spent the morning at the hospital talking to friends, colleagues and patients, trying as best she could to explain why she was going away, all the while knowing that it was herself she was trying to convince. She did not tell them what was actually going on, of course. How could she? The truth was preposterous, perhaps even insane, and if she’d mentioned her real motivations to her superior, a small bespectacled man by the name of Dr. Weldon Frey he would probably have had her committed.
Oh yeah, Weldon, by the way, I’m leaving because I’m going to join a man whom I don’t even know exists. A man who makes me come in my dreams like I’ve never come before, a man who I’m going with to find and help the new messiah save the world from greedy and destructive forces. And afterwards we’re going to travel in a beam of blue light to a strange foreign land with three suns and fields of amber grain. And by the way, Weldon, I know all of this because a magical object shaped like a pyramid told me so. And you ought to see what else the object can do. When you touch it, it pulses in sync with your heartbeat and gives you a direct link to past, present and future. And believe me you don’t want to see the future.
Sure, that would do the trick. She decided against this strategy and instead explained to him that following her grandfather’s funeral this afternoon she was embarking on a little vacation. That she needed to get away, that she had been planning a vacation to Paris in two weeks anyway and that she would just leave a little earlier.
“Will you still go to Paris?” Dr. Frey asked in a careful tone.
“No, I don’t think so. Those were plans Greg and I had, and since then we’ve had a little … falling out.”
“Oh.” Dr. Frey gave a sage nod. “Sorry to hear that. Where will you go then?”
“I don’t know,” Danielle replied. “I haven’t decided yet.” This, at least, was the truth.
“Are you all right, Danielle?” Dr. Frey asked with concern.
“I’ve never been better, Weldon. My grandfather’s death has opened my eyes to some harsh truths, and I’m just stepping back and looking at life from a different angle. That’s all. When you’re young I don’t think you’re actually aware of your own mortality until it comes up and slaps you square in the face. Seeing Grampy Joe dead like that made me realize that life is fleeting and there are certain things a person must do to complete his mission in life, so to speak …”
Danielle’s voice trailed off when she saw the look of concern on Dr. Frey’s face. She knew that he had sensed the change in her, but strangely she didn’t care. She wanted to laugh out loud with triumph but knew that it would be the wrong thing to do.
“Do you believe in destiny, Weldon? Do you believe that each individual has a place in history that’s cast long before that person is ever born?”
Dr. Frey viewed Danielle for a long moment, as if he were attempting to decipher her enigmas through the intense depth of her eyes. “If you’re asking me what I think about your life, Danielle, it’s not my place to comment.”
“Do comment, Dr. Frey.”
“Okay, then. You’re doing wonderful work here. I don’t have to tell you that. But obviously you’re not … happy. I can see that now.”
Danielle did not reply. Her emotions were much too complex to be labeled happy or unhappy. That was too black and white. There was lots of gray area that even she did not fully understand. How could someone else have understood?
“I think that this is your destiny,” Frey said in an obvious attempt to convince her to stay on. “The hospital, the patients, the staff, they all count on you. You’re kind, you’re gentle, you have a rare confidence in your abilities that does not translate into cockiness or smugness as it does with so many other doctors. Instead, it gives you an air of self-assurance and competence that’s very reassuring and almost … well, angelic.”
Danielle blinked in surprise. She didn’t like that word all of a sudden and the sound of it made her recoil in shock, and a feeling of deep dread washed over her in repellent waves.
“Did I say something wrong, Danielle?” Dr. Frey asked, seeing the dark look on her face.
“No! No, Weldon, it’s just that, well, I had no idea you thought of me in such a way. Angelic is not the way I would have described myself.”
“It’s true, though, Danielle.”
“No it’s not, Weldon. I’m human. I have human faults. Just like everyone else.” Danielle turned away in embarrassment. “But thank you just the same.”
Dr. Frey’s expression remained steadfast. “And furthermore I believe most of the staff feels exactly the same way. I get a sense about you, Danielle. I … wouldn’t want you to do anything … rash.”
“You don’t think I int
end to come back, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think. I know that the murder of your grandfather has devastated you. I just don’t think it would be prudent for you to react too harshly to the tragedy, that’s all. Are you contemplating not returning?”
Danielle had to stop and catch her breath. The man had read her like an open book. It was crazy, no doubt about it. The craziest thing she had ever considered. It was just not like her. She’d always been so pragmatic, practical to a fault. Everybody knew that. The funny part about it, though, was, she wasn’t contemplating at all.
Something bad was going to happen to the world. She didn’t know what exactly but she knew that it was true and she felt strongly that she was destined to be somehow a part of whatever it was. Good or bad, she needed to get on with it. Her destiny no longer remained here in this hospital with these wonderful people who had helped to shape her into the person she was. Her true destiny lay out there somewhere in an unknown time and place.
Grampy Joe never lied but he certainly had died. Murdered. By individuals or factions beyond her comprehension. And through his death he had given her a gift. And now her life was laid out before her like a roadmap, and the urgency and exhilaration she felt overrode every other emotion her mind and body could conjure. She knew what she was about to do. Every part of it was somehow planned out in her instinctive regions, and it had been done almost without her assistance. She was about to go to that bank, draw out all her savings, empty the safe deposit box of its strange contents and hit the road. It was insane. And she had no proof that what she sought even existed. She only had her intuition, her gut, and those things told her, in complete contradiction to what her intellect said, that it was all real and that she’d better get moving because time was short.
Trust the object, it will show you the way.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Just give me some time and I’ll make a decision. I’ve already arranged for Drs. Bernard and Salinger to take over my duties while I’m gone.”
And so Danielle did the completely irrational. Following Grampy Joe’s memorial service she turned his house-key over to members of the church, people who were happy to take and distribute his remaining possessions to the needy. She instructed them to lock the house after leaving and told them she would be in touch.
Afterward she went back to her condo and closed the place up, taking only necessary items, clothing and personal things. She called the power and phone companies with instructions for them to temporarily discontinue service. The bank closed at five and she just made it, drawing out a portion of her savings and retrieving the file from the safe deposit box. She had checks and credit cards and she took a portion in traveler’s checks. Then she hit the road, heading north toward the Florida Panhandle where she picked up Interstate 10 and headed west toward Alabama, Mississippi and beyond, not knowing where she was bound but confident that instinct would lead the way. She crossed the Florida border into Alabama at ten fifteen and stopped for a late dinner. Afterward she hit the road and continued west, onward toward her destiny.
End of Free preview.
Be sure to check out all three books of the Blue Light Series starting with Apocalypse Island.
The Haunting of Sam Cabot (A Supernatural Thriller) Page 18