Gift of Death (Gifted Book 1)

by Lin Augustine

  I’m wringing my hands even more now, with every word he says. It’s quiet for a while. I can feel him looking at me but I keep my gaze on my hands. These hands…

  I don’t want to fear my hands anymore. I don’t want to fear touching people anymore. I’ll never be able to erase the memories but I don’t want to fear creating new, worse ones anymore. I just want it to be over.

  I stop wringing my hands and turn my head to him. “I’ll do it. I’ll do all the tasks.”

  “Chrys—”

  “My gift. It’s death.”

  His eyes open wide and I feel that tiny shred of confidence that came from nowhere start to fade away, but before it does completely, I force myself to keep talking.

  “If I touch someone,” I say, “my skin on their skin, I can make them die. Stop their heart in an instant. Looks like a heart attack. It’s quick. Painless. For them, at least. For me…” My voice shakes, so I stop.

  He turns away. “That must have been difficult for you, back when you had no control over it.”

  “Yeah. It was.”

  And then, a tear falls down my face and more tears follow. And then my whole body is shaking from the sobs. Hunter stays with me, but he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t come closer. He doesn’t try to make me happy either. So, I cry with him there, until the sky turns red and the dinner bell rings.

  Chapter 6

  Ron is the kind of girl who hates to be alone. She waited for Chrys to come back in silence, staring out the door Chrys left open. She waited for half an hour, like she said she would. She felt a sense of relief, but also disappointment, when Chrys didn’t come back. So she turned on the engine and backed down the road, all the way back to where it met the main road. It took way longer than she expected, but she had to go slowly and carefully, and take breaks often because peering back was hurting her neck.

  And now, she’s driving down that main road the way they had come, eyes constantly glancing at the fuel meter and the clock. It’s practically on E. And it’s way past lunch time. But at least the town is coming into view now.

  “I guess,” she says out loud to herself, as though Chrys is there listening, “I should do as you said and dump the truck. Probably shouldn’t be seen going into town with it anyway.”

  She finds a gap in the metal barrier separating the road from the forest and drives in as far as she can. Then she turns off the engine and gets the backpack from the ground on Chrys’s side. It holds everything both she and Chrys have. There isn’t much. Some money—just $17—a change of clothes for the both of them, two bags of potato chips, a bottle of water, and chargers for the cheap little flip phones they managed to acquire before they ran away. Ron much prefers the smartphones she’s used to but these phones will have to do.

  Chrys didn’t take her clothes or the charger. Ron hopes she’ll be able to find those things in the camp.

  Ron eats one of the bags of chips and drinks a fourth of the water. Then she hops out of the truck and goes to the main road. She turns back to look into the forest. You can kind of see the truck, if you’re looking for it, but it’s good enough. She walks into town.

  Ron really likes hiking. Especially thru-hiking. She used to read blogs about thru-hikers, hiking the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail from end to end. One of their biggest complaints is always leaving those shaded stretches of trail to walk the tarmac. Tarmac is hot and hard and hurts your feet.

  She understands what they mean now.

  By the time she gets to the edge of town, an hour has passed. She’s sweaty and thirsty but doesn’t want to waste her water. She’s already drunk it down to half.

  This is the kind of small town made of flimsy old-looking wooden buildings all clustered together, where you might expect some kind of showdown in a Western. The only difference is the ground isn’t dusty or dry. Most of the ground is paved and trees or bushes or flowers line the sidewalks. Many buildings don’t even have signs, probably because everyone here knows where everything is.

  As Ron walks through the town, people step out onto their porches and watch her past. Some of them talk to each other, their voices carrying but no distinct words can be heard from where Ron is. Everyone who steps out looks almost the same—tall, at least forty years old, and white.

  “Oh man, maybe I should have gone to the camp instead,” Ron mutters to herself, trudging along, not really sure where she’s heading.

  Ron is sixteen years old, just like Chrys, but where Chrys has a baby face making her look younger than she is, Ron has a mature-looking face. Ron knows she can pass for at least twenty, so these people probably aren’t staring because they think some kid is out here walking all by herself.

  She spots what looks like a market or convenience store or something. Trying to ignore all the eyes watching her every step, she makes a beeline to the store.

  As soon as she steps inside, she sighs in relief. The eyes, gone. And the A.C. in here, oh yes. It’s divine.

  A woman who was sitting behind the counter stands up when Ron enters. Like most of the others Ron saw outside, this woman is tall and white. But unlike the others, she looks pretty young, maybe in her 20s. She has long, wavy hair tied into a low braided ponytail with flyaways on the crown of her head and down the length of the braid. Her hair and eyebrows are a reddish-orange like fire. Her face and chest and shoulders and arms—all the skin Ron can see—are covered in freckles.

  “Hey,” the woman says. “Anything I can do for ya?”

  “Oh, um, I’m just here for some food and water,” Ron says, taking care to enunciate and speak as properly as possible, feeling like the ambassador for black people here, trying to make a good impression.

  The woman nods. “Help yourself.” She sits back down and buries her face in a newspaper.

  Ron glances at the title on the front page. The Normal News. She hasn’t heard of that one before. She reads the headline as she walks past the counter. “SUSPECTED GIFTED: BOY KILLS FAMILY OF FIVE.”

  Looks like the kind of stuff Chrys used to read.

  Ron goes to the fridges at the back and takes the cheapest bottle of water. One dollar. Then she goes to the shelves, scanning the prices before even looking at the food they’re describing. She finds something that’s one dollar and looks up at it. She grimaces. Chips. She’ll have to shell out more than she wants then. If only she could get something sweet. Ron could live off of sugar for the rest of her life and be happy.

  She goes to the next aisle and smiles. Strawberry Pop-tarts. And just about $4 for a box of 16. She grabs a box. She should get some real food, but there are only snacks and junk in here. She goes to the register.

  The woman puts aside her newspaper and stands up again. “Find everything ya need?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Ron says.

  The woman rings her up. “That’ll be five twenty-four.”

  Ron hands her a ten dollar bill.

  As the woman opens the register and counts out change, she says, “Ya here because of them gifted people?”

  Ron’s heart almost stops, but smoothly, she says, “Yes.”

  A simple answer, open to interpretation. She’ll let the woman’s response guide what she says next.

  The woman hands her the change. “Figures. We get a lot of people searching for them coming through here. Damn so-called gifted. I wish someone’d take out that camp already, if it even exists.”

  Ron puts her money, water and Pop-tarts away, careful not to change her facial expression. She’s had a lot of practice being a stone.

  So that’s how it’s going to be here, huh? Then so be it.

  She’s had a lot of practice trying to fit in too.

  “Yeah,” Ron says, “I heard they’re around here.”

  The woman flips her braid back. “Unfortunately so. Can’t get a good lead on them though.”

  “I think I have
one,” Ron says, playing off the woman. Back when she was a pre-teen, when she was still small and innocent-looking, she used to tell people she was a medium. They’d give her money to speak to the dead. But it was all a ruse. She was just cold reading them and chomping down on any information they handed her.

  “Really?” the woman says, delighted. “Giselle would love to hear it then. She’s my wife.”

  Ron is silent for a moment, considering her next move. She can sidle up to these people easily. She found herself doing it naturally, already. But is that wise? Chrys always used to tell Ron to stop acting on instinct and think a little.

  “What?” the woman says, voice rising. “You think a small town hick can’t be a lesbian?”

  Ron holds her hands up, placating, and says quickly, “No, no. I was just thinking ‘bout something—about something. I don’t care about all of that.”

  Maybe it isn’t wise, but what other options does she have?

  “You see,” Ron says, “this is sort of, well, it’s important intel, you know? And I don’t know who I can trust here.”

  She points at herself. “Us! Definitely us! We’re good at keeping secrets.”

  Ron rubs the back of her neck. “I don’t know…”

  The woman comes out from behind the counter. She towers over Ron but looks down at her like a puppy excited to go on a walk.

  “Come on,” she says, “I’ll take you up to Giselle real quick.”

  “But what about the store?”

  “I’ll just lock the door for a bit. Come on. It’s just upstairs.”

  “Alright, I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

  The woman leads Ron out of the store and up the stairs on the side of the building. Ron follows with an almost imperceptible smile on her face.

  Chapter 7

  “Giselle!” the woman calls out after opening the front door. “Elly!”

  She steps inside, leaving the door open. Ron follows and closes the door behind her. The woman must have disappeared into another room. She’s in the living room. It’s decorated like an old woman’s house—a plush blue sofa covered in plastic, a regal-looking red armchair next to it also in plastic, a grandfather clock tick tick ticking where a TV should be, a coffee table that’s just a tree stump, a cluster of pictures in large wooden frames hung on the wall.

  Ron goes closer to the pictures. All of them are of two women together. One is that ginger woman from the store and another is a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with thick, straight eyebrows. She has big eyes and a small, heart-shaped face. She wears her hair down just past her shoulders, parted in the middle where her widow’s peak is.

  One photo is a full body shot of the two of them at the beach in bikinis. The ginger woman is all flat and like a rectangle, no shape to her at all. But the other woman, a head shorter than the ginger one, has a full bust and a cinched waist and hips larger than her shoulders. Knotted, scarred skin covers her legs and the lower half of her stomach.

  “I found her,” the woman from the store says.

  Ron turns toward her voice. The woman is heading toward the sofa. The dark-haired woman from the photos is following her, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She’s in a satin camisole dress that ends just past her hips. Her legs are scarred just like in the photo.

  They sit down on the sofa and it groans as the plastic shifts under them. The woman gestures to the armchair.

  “Have a seat,” she says.

  As Ron walks over, the woman places both hands on the sleepy woman’s shoulders and says, “This is Giselle.”

  Ron takes off her backpack and puts it on the floor and then sits down, the plastic hot and sticky under her bare legs. “And you are? I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She giggles. “I’m Iris.”

  Ron nods. “Ron.”

  Iris claps her hands in front of her. “Ah, would you like something to eat or drink?”

  Ron’s throat and stomach tighten. She would very much love that. But, she doesn’t want to be too indebted to them, so she says, “Just some water please.”

  “Tap okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ya want ice in it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Iris gets up and heads to the small kitchen that is separated from the living room only by a square dining table surrounded by four chairs.

  Giselle, still looking kind of out of it, says, “Coffee for me. Instant is fine. Cold.”

  “Sure thing,” Iris calls from the kitchen.

  Giselle stretches with a loud groan and then turns to me. “So I hear you have a lead.”

  “Yes,” Ron says.

  Giselle nods, lazily gesturing for her to continue.

  Ron thought about what to say as she walked up the stairs, so she’s ready now. She would lie, of course. But the best lies have a sprinkle of truth in them.

  “Before I came here, I was in the forest,” Ron says. “Like you, I’ve heard there’s some sort of camp out there. While I was there, I came across a whole group of them. I don’t think it was the actual camp—it was just a couple. But I think they’re part of the camp somehow and that the camp may be close to where I found them.”

  Giselle, now alert, nods as Ron speaks, eyes focused on her face.

  Iris comes over with a tray. She hands Ron a glass of water. The ice clinks as Ron takes a modest sip, her throat begging for more but she instead rests the glass on her lap, delighted by the chill. Unlike the store down below, there’s no A.C. up here. The windows are open but they’re just bringing in more hot, stuffy air.

  Iris places the tray on the tree stump table in front of the sofa. Giselle takes her iced coffee and drinks deeply, downing half of it in one breath. Iris didn’t bring anything for herself.

  “So,” Giselle says, a little breathless from her ravenous drinking, “we go back there, we can maybe find the camp.”

  “Exactly,” Ron says, locking gazes with Giselle.

  Of course, Ron has no clue where that group of people Chrys found actually were, or where they went after that. But that doesn’t matter. All Ron has to do is take them anywhere, lead them on, and if she’s wrong then oh well, can’t be helped, right? Then she’ll just come up with another theory, and another, biding her time with these people until she gets that call from Chrys.

  “What happened when you came across them?” Iris asks.

  Ron shifts her gaze to Iris.

  “Well,” Ron says, relishing in the spinning of this narrative, “I stumbled upon them—took us both by surprise. One of them created some kind of small earthquake to stop me from coming any further and then another put me to sleep somehow. Happened in an instant. When I woke up, hours later, they were all gone and that’s when I realized what they were.” She paused a bit, thinking of the newspaper Iris was reading earlier and added, “They stole most of my food, water and money. It’s a good thing I had a little bit of money hidden that they didn’t find or else I’d be screwed. I had intended to stay in the forest for a week or so but had to come into town early because of those thieves.”

  Iris is staring at her with her mouth dropped open. She has a fascinated, child-like look to her. But Giselle’s jaw is clenched and her face looks hard and determined. Her eyes never leave Ron.

  Ron glances at Giselle’s legs. It was a quick, involuntary glance, but judging by the way Giselle has been watching Ron, Ron is pretty sure Giselle noticed.

  “Tell me,” Giselle says, “why are you looking for the camp?”

  Iris looks like the kind of person who just goes along with whatever, aimless and no ambition. But Giselle… she looks like a leader, like she has a goal. A goal fueled by hatred. And the person worth cozying up to is always the leader.

  Ron glances at Giselle’s legs again, a slower, deliberate glance. That’s the key, isn’t it? But she’ll have to do some more p
ulling first before she can fabricate her own backstory.

  “Probably similar to you,” Ron says. “I’ve been around someone gifted before. Traumatized me.”

  Giselle leans forward, intrigued. “How so?”

  Ron tightens her throat to make her voice sound strained. “I don’t really like talking about it.” She glances at Giselle’s legs again.

  Giselle sits back. “It’s okay to talk about it. If we’re going to work together, we should trust each other, right?” She crosses her legs. “How about this? I tell you mine, you tell me yours.”

  Yes. Ron is throwing a party inside of her mind, but outside, she maintains a hesitant, wary composure.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Ron says. “That sounds fair.”

  “Okay. Mine is simple. For a long time, I was the only child, but then my parents had another kid. A boy. Gifted. With fire. He makes little fires here and there. It terrifies us but my parents don’t tell anyone, just my aunt—my mom’s sister. One day, he burns the house down. Parents don’t make it because they were trying to save us, but of course the little bastard is completely unharmed. The flames never bothered him. Ever. Anyway, after my recovery, my aunt took me in, but not him. She knew what he could do—everyone did now—so no one wanted to go near him. Eventually he was adopted by some woman, another bastard like him. No clue what happened to him after that.”

  Iris puts her hand on Giselle’s thigh, smiling. “We met when she came to town, looking for the camp like ya.”

  “So you’re a local?” Ron says, trying to buy a little time as she thinks of her own story. She doesn’t want something quite so serious. Plus, she has no scars or visible injuries so it’d have to be something mental.

  “Yep, born and raised,” Iris says.

  “Well?” Giselle says. “What’s yours?”

  “My mom,” Ron says. “She was gifted. She had some sort of hypnotic ability, like she could persuade anyone to do anything. She was also a drug addict, and she’d do anything for drugs. I grew up feeling like I had no will of my own. She’d force me to do things no kid should ever do. She’d force my dad to do all sorts of messed up things too. Eventually they both died from an overdose when I was twelve, so I was put into foster care. I recently aged out of the system.”