The sickening crack thundered through the night. Garrison flew backwards and landed in a heap several feet away. A second of deafening silence and then Derek whirled around, eyes wide against his face.
“Run!”
Isaiah didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed Amalie and ran.
Behind them, the world erupted. The sickening crunch of meat striking bone pulsed through the air. Groans, cries of pain, scuffling, snow being ground beneath trampling feet, followed them. Amalie twisted her head around just in time to watch as Derek was forced to his knees. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, hot against the cold. She saw her father rise up, dusting snow off his jacket. She saw him approach Derek, saw him take something from one of the other guards. The moon glinted off the gray steel.
“No!” she screamed. “Derek!”
His head twisted in her direction. “Go!” he shouted over the chaos. “Go!”
Isaiah pulled her into his arms, covering her head just as the bang split the heavens in half. It swallowed her screams. She almost crumpled. Isaiah kept her up, kept her running. Nothing below her neck felt real anymore. Derek was dead.
“Derek! Derek!” she wailed, choking on splinters of winter and her own grief.
“Run, Amalie!” Isaiah pleaded. “We’re almost there! Run!”
She pulled herself together, reminding herself that if she failed now, she would fail Derek. She would let his death be for nothing. She had to escape, for him, for Isaiah.
Another bang erupted around them. Then another. She screamed. Isaiah’s fingers tightened around hers. On the third bang, Isaiah cried out. His body jerked. Amalie may have screamed again, but everything was too loud even though the world had all but shrilled to a halt.
“Go!” He shoved her. “Run, Amalie!”
“No!” she moaned, reaching for him. “Not without you!”
“Go!” He shoved her again, harder. “I’m right behind you!” But he was limping, staggering and clutching his leg. “Run damn it!”
This time when he shoved, she ran. Behind her, she heard shouting, the familiar grunts and thuds of fists meeting bodies. She heard Isaiah cry out. Then, she heard the fourth bang.
There was no recollection of stopping. No memory of whipping around. No consciousness of screaming and screaming and screaming. She had no idea when she fell to the ground, clutching her face. Isaiah was on his face, bleeding into the beautiful white snow. The moon made the crimson puddle shimmer. His eyes were open, staring at her, his bloody mouth moving, forming the same three words over and over again, ‘I love you. I love you.’ And she couldn’t stop wailing. The world rang with the inhuman sound. She tried to claw to him, her fingers tore chunks from the ground, but her body was restrained, immobilized by cruel arms. She tried to fight, but they tightened, dragging her away.
“Will the betrayals never end?” she heard her father say as he moved to stand over Isaiah’s body, smoking gun in hand. His intent pierced through her with a fresh wave of terror.
“Daddy! No! Please, don’t! Please don’t! Please no!”
She heard the cock. Then the bang. Then silence as the darkness swallowed her whole.
***
Isaiah
Isaiah opened his eyes, wincing as the world stabbed him with shards of light. His body thrummed, a disjointed cacophony of pain that originated from nowhere and everywhere. He tried to remember the reasoning and it all came rushing back to him in a flood.
“Amalie!” He jerked upright, only to be grabbed by invisible hands and thrust back against the sheet of metal beneath him. His disorientated brain frantically pieced together his surroundings.
White walls. White ceiling. White lights. He was naked.
“Amalie?” he called, struggling against his restricted body.
“She can’t hear you,” a quiet, emotionless voice murmured from somewhere above his head. The owner moved slowly to stand at his side and he blinked up into Garrison’s face. “She can never hear you again.”
The world seemed to cave around him.
“What? No. No!” He thrashed against his binds. “You’re lying! Where is she? What have you done to her? Amalie!”
“She can’t hear you,” he said again, still quiet, still without a shred of emotion.
“Amalie! Amalie!”
Garrison moved away from him, slipping just out of sight.
“Where is she? Tell me where she is!” He was ignored.
Metal scraped against metal.
“I’ve been waiting for days for you to wake up,” Garrison said. “It just didn’t seem right to do it while you were sleeping. I wanted to see your face.”
“Where’s Amalie? Please tell me where she is! I don’t care what you do to me, just…please!”
Garrison appeared at his side again and Isaiah noticed for the first time the shadows beneath his eyes, the thick patch of stubble across his jaw and the strange glint beneath the green in his eyes. The man looked defeated and deranged.
“Amalie, my only daughter, is with her mother where, maybe, she belongs.”
Every ounce of air vanished from the room. The light blurred and flickered as he fought to remain conscious. Tears rolled a steady stream of agony into the hairs at his temples.
“No! No! I don’t believe you! What have you done to her?”
“Nothing,” Garrison said evenly. “You killed her the moment you turned her against me. You killed her with your betrayal after I gave you everything…” He broke off. “Why?”
“Because you’re a monster!” Isaiah said without reservation or hesitation. “Because you’re evil! Because what you’re doing isn’t right.”
“I’m helping her!” It was the first real sign of emotion. “I’m making her better!”
“You’re torturing her!” Isaiah argued, his own venom rising. “She was never crazy. She really sees her mother! Amalie’s special. She has a gift!”
It wasn’t until that moment he realized they were talking about her in the present tense. It gave him hope. Maybe she was alive. He had to keep Garrison talking, hopefully convince him to see her.
“Abigail is dead!” Garrison snapped. “No one can see dead people!”
“Amalie can.”
Something passed over Garrison’s face as he digested this bit of information. He stared over Isaiah’s body for several long moments, lost in his own world. It was a look Isaiah had seen him wear often when an idea had come to him, or a breakthrough. Whatever he was thinking had a deliberating glint appear in his eyes.
“A gift,” he murmured absently to himself. “An ability…”
Isaiah took advantage of his distraction. “Where is she?”
Without breaking his steady stare of the five corridors on Isaiah’s other side, Garrison answered torpidly, “Dead. She’s dead. She somehow opened her terrace doors. The ocean owns her now.”
Rage blanketed his body in a sheet of fire. “You son of a bitch! You killed her! You killed her like you killed all those people! You killed her! You killed her! You killed my Amalie!” The table rattled, but the straps binding his wrists and ankles refused to give way to his desire to tear the other man apart.
Garrison blinked. “Your Amalie? She was my Amalie. My daughter. The one I did everything for. You were nothing until I took you in. I gave you everything and how do you repay me? Your murder my little girl. Ungrateful, just like all the others.”
Isaiah wasn’t listening, lost in the mindless cyclone of his own agony. “You killed her! You killed her! Amalie! No! Not my Amalie! Not her! Please, please not her!”
“She was always gifted,” Garrison mused quietly to himself. He raised his hand and the lights glinted off the scalpel. The cold blade touched the skin of Isaiah’s breastplate. “So gifted. But we will never know if it was true. Don’t move. The incision has to be clean.”
Isaiah closed his eyes, turning his head away. It no longer mattered. What was there when Amalie was gone? What was there worth living for? He
’d failed her.
The end
Please enjoy an excerpt from Shelly Crane's series, Significance.
One
I waited for this day, for this one thing to complete me. To wrap up seventeen and three quarter years of my life and set a pretty bow on it in the form of a graduation cap. I waited for this one sheet of paper to tell me I had done something right.
I sat in my assigned seat, along with my classmates, in alphabetical order in front of the gym. The ones up front were in order by achievements, their faces lit with the relief of scholarships and graduation parties with gifts and family and friends...and getting out of this town.
I was numb. I had waited for this moment but now, I didn’t feel good inside. I didn’t feel complete, didn’t feel achieved. I felt like I’d slid by and barely made it, which was exactly what I’d done. I despised school. I was in the early release program for students who work after school, so we got out at 1:00 instead of 3:00 like everyone else. I was barely here and when I was I didn’t want to be.
I know I sound bitter. Believe me, I know. But I was seventeen, graduating a year early, and on the fast track to being valedictorian or whatever else, but things happened to me that I just couldn’t handle. And so, there I was, sullen, slightly unhappy and skidding by.
The ‘things’ I speak of, well, number one was that my mom left. She was an upstanding, stay at home mom, PTA loving, frugal grocery shopping, coupon clipping guru of the community. And she just left us, just like that. She decided out of nowhere that my dad had been holding her back all these years. She didn’t love him and she needed time to start a new life, without me there to pester her. So she did.
She moved to California along with every cent in my dad’s checking account and the one supposed to be for my college fund. I wanted to laugh at the Cali cliché, but I guess it didn’t suit her for long. She moved somewhere else, but I refused to speak to her anymore when she called. All she ever talked about was how sorry she was, that she just couldn’t do it anymore, that she was happy now, that I didn’t know what it was like to live with my dad. Yeah right. I’d counter that I was the only one still living with him and she’d hang up.
I was sure her newest boyfriend, who was ten years younger than her, could console her.
So here we are, present day, graduation day. I was waiting patiently for the m’s to roll around so I could grab my diploma and hear the one person that’ll be in the stands clap for me, my dad.
I glanced up in front of me to see Kyle looking back. He smiled. “You look like you’re in your own little world back there. You ok?”
“Yeah, I’m just ready to be done with this.”
He turned more fully in his chair, putting his arms on the back of it. “Come on. It’s graduation day. Shouldn’t you be happy?” he reasoned. I just shrugged. “You wanna do something tonight? My parents are throwing this lousy party for me, but I’m looking for an excuse to leave early.”
“I don’t want to be your excuse, Kyle.”
He paled, his brow bunched together. “Ah, Mags, I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighed. “My party is from five to seven. I’ll have plenty of time to do something with you, I just didn’t want it to seem so much like a date, you know,” he explained and looked at me bashfully. “In case you said no, again.”
“Oh.” I felt an inch and a half tall. “Kyle, I…” I was this close to telling him no, once more but I thought about it. I had always told him no. I hadn’t been on a date in a year, every since my life fell under my mom’s pointy heels. He was always sweet to me and he was probably leaving soon anyway for college. What could it hurt? “Ok. Yeah, we can do something.”
“Really?” he said shocked.
“Yeah. What time do you want to go?”
“Is your dad throwing you a party or something?”
“No.” Ha. Yeah right.
“Oh. Uh, how about I text you? I’m sure it’s fine, but I gotta ask my dad for the car. Mine’s in the shop.”
“Ok, let me give you my number,” I said and started to pull up my gown to reach my pocket.
“I have it.” I looked at him curiously and he grinned. “I asked Rebecca for it a couple weeks ago. I was gonna call you but I never, uh, got up the nerve.”
He looked a little embarrassed and I couldn’t help but giggle a little at his obvious hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression. He was nice looking. No movie star stud, just a normal, light brown hair, brown eyed nice guy. We’d hung out a lot over the years in our group of friends, but never alone.
“Well, maybe you should have.”
“Would you have talked to me?”
I didn’t want to lie and I didn’t want to give him false hope so I just smiled and shrugged, hoping to pull off a little flirt. It must have worked; he grinned wider. “Ok, I’ll text you tonight.”
“Great,” my mouth said, but my head was already dreading it.
Then I saw the people ahead of him start to stand one by one as their names were called.
“Kyle Jacobson.” He looked back and grinned at me once more as he made his way on stage. There were still about eight people before me. I watched him make his way to the stage and saw his parents and a large group of others stand and applaud loudly for him, a couple whooping and hooting. He grabbed his diploma and then made a show of muscles. Everyone laughed as he bounded down the stairs. He was a crack up. Everyone liked him and voted him class clown in superlatives. He was popular, but never really dated anyone. He was always nice to me though. I used to hang out with that crowd, before everything happened.
After my mom left, my dad was lost. He went a little ‘nuts’. He quit going to work and got fired from a job he’d had for over fifteen years at the school board and now works at the wood mill for a quarter of what he made before. So, I had to get into the work release program and get a job because we had no extra money for anything other than food that I needed or wanted.
When I told my mom all this, when I explained how I had to get a job to help and how Dad was so destroyed by what she’d done, she said it was good for us to experience a little bit of heartache and hard work for a change. That was it. That was the last straw.
That was the day I decided to never speak to her again.
“Maggie Masters.”
I heard my name and looked up. Everyone was looking and I realized that my name had been called more than once. I blushed and giggled nervously as I made my way up to the stage. I chuckled under my breath as I half expected the announcer to call out Mags or Magster or Maggsie. No one called me by my real name hardly ever.
I took my diploma and turned to look for Dad. He was sitting there. Just sitting there, not taking pictures, not clapping, not smiling, just watching stoically.
I frowned and made my way down to the end of the platform and was lifted into warm arms. Familiar warm arms.
“Congratulations,” he whispered into my hair.
“Chad. Don’t.”
“Mags, come on.” He put me down, but didn’t let me go as he looked at me pleadingly. “We graduated. Let’s celebrate! Can’t you let go of the past, just for today?”
I looked up to his black hair. The dark short locks that any girl would love to run her fingers through. His tan skin and brown eyes with his lean Friday night football arms that always held me like I mattered. Oh, how I missed him, but he was the one who left me.
“You certainly know how to let go of things,” I countered.
“Maggie.” He sighed exasperatingly, like I was being unreasonable and it made me fume even more. “Look. That was almost year ago. And you know I wouldn’t have broken up with you if you’d told me what was going on with your mom and all.”
“Oh. That makes me feel so much better,” I said and let the sarcasm drip.
“You know what I mean. We’d had that talk, a lot. I’m leaving, we both knew it when we started seeing each other. I thought we agreed it’d be easier if we calmed down a little and just were friends the last year of sc
hool. I didn’t date anyone else, you know that. It wasn’t because I didn’t want you.”
It was true. He hadn’t been on one date this whole school year that I’d known about. He and his friends even made a pact to go to prom together as a group. There were a lot of angry girls over this pact as it appeared it caught on and almost the whole football team went stag.
“I know that. But you haven’t talked to me all year,” I said softly.
“Maggie. You wouldn’t return my phone calls. You avoided me at lunch and then started working after school. What else could I do?”
He was right. The only time I talked to him was to yell at him one month after he broke up with me and my mom left. Coincidentally, it was three days after she left that he decided to make the decision for the both of us; the decision that we’d talked about but not come to a conclusion to.
Touching Eternity (Touch Series 1.5) Page 29
