Lingering Haze (The Elusive Strain Book 1)

by James Berardinelli

  The Elusive Strain Book One: Lingering Haze

  By James Berardinelli

  © 2017 James Berardinelli

  Cover art by Jacob Atienza

  Map by Jack O. Gibson

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Awakening

  Chapter Two: A Stalking

  Chapter Three: The Verdant Blight

  Chapter Four: The Headache

  Chapter Five: Aeris

  Chapter Six: Father Backus’ Catechism

  Chapter Seven: The Summoner’s Test

  Chapter Eight: The Missing

  Chapter Nine: By the Pricking of My Thumb

  Chapter Ten: Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Chapter Eleven: The Consequences of Breathing

  Chapter Twelve: Fragments of a Life that Was

  Chapter Thirteen: The One-Handed Tinker

  Chapter Fourteen: The Long Road Beckons

  Chapter Fifteen: Ill Wind

  Chapter Sixteen: Pyre

  Chapter Seventeen: West Fork

  Chapter Eighteen: The Princess and the Guide

  Chapter Nineteen: The Westerlands

  Chapter Twenty: The Presence in the Rank

  Chapter Twenty-One: The First Day of Fading

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Stricken

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Smoke Signals

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Man in the Mountain

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Mysteries of the Mind

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Hobson’s Choice

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Summoner’s Gambit

  Epilogue: Alone Again

  Lingering Haze

  by James Berardinelli

  Chapter One: Awakening

  In a life suddenly gone mad, Janelle - my name - was the only thing I had left. It came to me forcefully, like a lightning bolt in the dead of night, and I clung to it like the drowning girl I was, repeating it in my mind and with my lips like a mantra. Perhaps if I said it enough times, the reality - my reality - would replace the one momentarily glimpsed by my eyes when they had fluttered open moments ago.

  It was a strange and frightening thing to be marooned in the present with the past evaporating like a mist in the face of a hurricane. My memories had been shredded by whatever force had brought me to this state. It was impossible to find stability with everything around me shifting. The human experience is a sum of memories and when those are no longer reliable or accessible, existence becomes tenuous at best.

  At least I knew who I was. True, my identity had fragmented along with my remembrances but my core essence remained firm. I was Janelle. It was more than a name, more than the two entwined syllables people used to identify me. Now, it defined me. With past and future equally nebulous, it provided the anchor I needed.

  When a person wakes from a dream, the sum and substance of the mind's nocturnal wanderings fade quickly and permanently, leaving behind only impressions: fear, longing, desire, joy, despair. For me, in this fragile, fleeting state of being, memories had become like dreams. But there was one image that lingered, perhaps the last one: a flash of blinding light rending the sky and slashing toward me. Then white-hot pain and the surcease of darkness.

  Now was not the time to grapple with what I had lost. If the present was the only thing remaining to me then I needed to live in the present until I could build new memories or recover the ones I had lost. As terrifying as my current circumstances were, I needed to face them squarely. So, steeling myself for what I might observe, I allowed my eyelids to lift.

  Vegetation surrounded me - plants like none I had ever before seen. Big-leafed shrubs and squat, thick-trunked trees. The air was clear and pure, the sky high above incredibly blue. Instinct told me I was somewhere far from what I called familiar. Evanescent memories teased me - of paved lanes and meticulously groomed lawns, of pruned bushes and air thick with the haze of pollution. That was home. This was not.

  I took a deep breath - old training asserting itself, reminding me that the first step in facing a new situation was to calm myself. Some part of me wondered if this might all be a dream but deep down I knew that whatever it was, I wasn't going to awaken any time soon. Something had happened but figuring out the whats and whys of the situation weren't paramount. Survival was my concern. The more my mind stabilized in the wake of the panic-inducing dispersal of my past and the physical transference of my body, the more certain I was that the continuation of my existence depended on decisions I was about to make. If I died now, it wouldn't matter what I could remember or where I was.

  Reach out with your senses when you're in a new place. Not just one or two of them. You have five; use them all. I don't know whether I had been told that or read it in a book but it applied to this situation. There was only so much my eyes could tell me about my current circumstances.

  My physical state was impossible to ignore. Without clothing or jewelry for my body or polish for my nails, I was stark naked, stripped bare of any and all protection and adornments. My nose sniffed the scent of something burnt and a quick check revealed that every strand of hair, whether on my head, eyebrows, or elsewhere, was singed, almost as if I had passed through a fire. My skin had reddened as if from an all-over sunburn - uncomfortable but not painful. I wouldn't have minded some lotion but that was so far down my list of concerns that it didn't merit a second thought.

  At least for the moment, the temperature was mild so I didn't have to worry about freezing to death. The ground beneath my feet was damp, as if from a recent rain. I could hear the drip-drip-dripping of water as droplets slipped off overburdened leaves. As my eyes adjusted to the bright light, I noticed that everything glistened. Had my nostrils not been burdened by the perfume of scorched follicles, I suspected I might have discerned the distinct odor that followed a summer thunderstorm. The taste in my mouth was thick and metallic, unlike anything I had previously sampled. What that portended, I couldn't guess.

  I strained my ears to determine whether there was anything around me beyond the verdant growth, the gentle carpet of moss and decaying leaves, and the bequest of the rain storm. It was eerily quiet: no buzzing insects, no cawing birds, no sounds of small animals rustling through the undergrowth. Aside from the vegetation, I might be the only thing alive for miles. It wasn't a comforting thought. Whatever my strengths might be, wilderness survival wasn’t among them. Procuring water wouldn’t be a problem, but what about food and shelter? Without matches or a lighter, I doubted I’d be able to start a fire. Rubbing two sticks together…? At the moment, the need to encounter another person outweighed the awkwardness of being seen unclothed by him or her.

  Janelle, you've got a great body. You shouldn't hide it so much. The voice sang out in my mind almost as if the person speaking was standing next to me. But she wasn't. I didn't know who she was or why she had said it. Was she a friend? A sister? A mother?

  A great body, though? Hardly. My chest was too flat, my hips not round enough. I had the appearance of an athlete although I lacked memories of doing anything sporty. I didn't need a mirror to know what my features were like; my face was, for lack of a better word, “cute.” (That’s what everyone said about me - not “beautiful” or “attractive” or even “pretty” - just “cute.”) My shoulder-length hair was the color of a ripe acorn - or it had been before my ordeal. Now, it felt as stiff as straw. God knew what it looked like.

  I tried to get up and found my legs to be as weak as rubber under me, their strength sapped. To stand, I had to rely on the support of a nearby tree. The smoothness of the bark, as slippery as glass or ice, was unfamiliar. Or maybe I knew of it but couldn't remember. That was the problem with holes in the memo
ry: you couldn't be sure what you might have forgotten.

  Leaning against the tree in a standing position, my breath streamed from me like I had run a marathon. Why did simple actions demand such exertion? Why was the mere act of rising foreign? What had happened to me? Denying the actuality of the situation was pointless. This was far too tangible to be a dream. But what was it? Had I gone insane and slipped into a self-created world, trapped somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind? Or perhaps I was dead. This didn't seem much like the afterlife my pastor had droned on about Sunday after Sunday but what other explanation could there be?

  After a short rest, my legs stopped trembling and I was able to stand without aid. I took a tentative step or two and felt like a toddler learning to walk. The ground, which was soft and warm, felt good beneath my feet until my left sole was pierced by a razor-sharp thorn buried in the upper layer of loam. The pain did two things: it caused me to let out a yelp followed by a string of profanity and it jogged free a memory from the haze behind which so many of my remembrances had retreated.

  I had been perhaps eight years old, so the event had occurred a decade ago. Running barefoot along the sidewalk near my house, I had misstepped as children of that age sometimes do and fallen forward, barely raising my left arm in time to protect my face from smacking the concrete. In the immediate aftermath of the fall, I had hurt in so many places that it had been hard to determine which was worse: my twisted ankle, my bloody knees, or my shattered wrist. I had been crying - wailing and screaming, actually - but no one had heard me. Then, as now, I had been all alone. Except at eight years old, I had been able to make my way home, hobbled and bleeding and cradling my injured hand, where my parents had been waiting. This time, something told me home and my parents were far, far away.

  The wave of isolation and loneliness was so unexpected that my knees nearly buckled. It wasn't good to think hard about my situation. Precarious didn't begin to describe it. I had a pretty good idea of who I was at the moment but only the vaguest notion of who I had been. As for my whereabouts… I was as lost as I was at a loss. Answers were for later. Now I had to start moving and thinking about the basics of living in these circumstances. Just because I wasn’t a survivalist didn’t mean I couldn’t survive. The weather was warm although there was no guarantee the temperate conditions would last, especially after nightfall. If there were other people in the vicinity, I needed to find them. If not, I would probably either starve to death or poison myself eating a berry that wasn't meant for a person to ingest.

  I sat cross-legged on the ground and gently extracted the thorn from my foot. A half-inch in length and curved like a talon, it awakened me to the hidden dangers I faced: cuts, punctures, infections. Once the offending object had been plucked out, I resumed my journey, stepping gingerly, using my toes to probe the mud where I couldn’t see. My eyes were attentive, darting everywhere, and my ears were no less active. This wasn’t like any forest I was familiar with. The trees looked different. They were shorter and stubbier with a sparse leaf canopy that allowed sunlight to filter to the ground. There wasn’t much color - everything was shades of green and brown without small wildflowers or multi-hued leaves to break the monotony. The more I studied my surroundings, the more alien they appeared.

  Time moved differently here. The sun’s traversal of the daytime sky was slower than I was accustomed to. Without a clock, it was impossible to tell the passage of hours with any degree of accuracy, but it felt like I had been walking for hours while the sun had barely moved. By the time it reached its zenith, the air temperature had become unpleasantly warm. When I decided to rest for a while to ease the ache in my calves, I found a shaded spot under a large tree and practically collapsed. My skin was slick with perspiration.

  As I sat with my back against the velvety bark, I contemplated my situation - something I had been trying not to do as I traveled lest it impede my intensity of focus. It would be easy to give in to despair. It took only a moment’s consideration to recognize how desperate things were. I had been lost before but never this completely. It was as if some unseen hand had plucked me from a safe, familiar place and dropped me here. Not only didn’t I know where I was but I didn’t know where I was supposed to be going. I had always been decisive and goals-oriented. I remembered that much about myself. But how was I supposed to achieve an objective when I had no idea what it might be?

  If I continued in the direction I had been walking, essentially following the path of least resistance through what appeared to be uninhabited terrain, where would it lead me? Was I headed deeper into the wilderness? I rejected the possibility that this place, wherever or whatever it might be, was devoid of people. Someone had brought me here and that implied intelligence and purpose. That belief kept me from sinking into dejection. I recognized that maintaining a hopeful attitude was one of the most important survival tools at my disposal.

  After a short nap, I backtracked to a small running brook I had passed earlier. I slaked my thirst there, cleaned the wound on my foot, and took a quick bath with the cool water washing away the grime and the residual smell of burnt hair. Somewhat refreshed, I was ready to resume my journey. The long afternoon passed lazily, with the ground drying even as the air became pregnant with moisture. Other than the plants, there was no sign of anything living - not even the tiniest ant or mosquito and certainly nothing larger. By the time I stopped again, the sun was beginning to dip in the sky. Night would soon be here and, based on my rudimentary understanding of celestial mechanics, it would be as long as the day. At some point, I would need to establish some kind of shelter (or at least identify a place where I could spend the night).

  Once the sun was closer to the horizon than its zenith, the air had cooled enough so sweat was no longer dripping off me. I located a clearing that I thought might make a passable spot to wait out the dark hours. Not having to worry about bugs or animals meant that the only real concerns were temperature and physical discomfort. The ground here was carpeted with moss. It felt soft enough at the moment but I knew that wouldn’t be the case after lying on it for several hours. I wasn’t sure how to keep warm. I lacked the materials to create a makeshift blanket - the best I could do was strip leaves off trees and sleep under a pile of them. I didn’t think that would be effective but it was the best I could do.

  My stomach grumbled, reminding me that, although finding water hadn’t been a problem, I hadn’t eaten anything since my arrival. Based on what I’d seen thus far, my only option seemed to be munching on leaves. Taste considerations aside (maybe I could convince myself I was eating a salad without dressing), I didn’t know whether they were edible. Exchanging hunger cramps for a bout of vomiting wasn’t an equitable trade-off. I decided to wait for as long as I could before sampling them. I recall reading about people who had lived weeks without eating. I doubted my stomach would welcome something that extreme but, at the moment, not eating anything was more appealing than eating what might worsen my situation.

  Twilight was a long, lingering experience. In other circumstances, I might have enjoyed it. As the day’s light dimmed with the sun sliding beneath the horizon, the forest became a strange and otherworldly place. It took forever for true dusk to descend. For what seemed like hours after sunset, I could still see my surroundings. Darkness came with such a gentle gradualness that it was with some surprise that, at one point, I realized I could no longer see. Even a hand placed an inch from my face was invisible.

  I tried to sleep. I was sore and exhausted, my body unused to the deprivations and exertions it had been put through today. But my bed was too uncomfortable to allow me to doze even fitfully and my mind remained active. No amount of thinking, however, could resolve my situation. The whys and hows of what had happened were unknowable. Was this a physical place to which I had been unaccountably transported or was it a state of mind? The flash of light - had it been lightning? Had I been electrocuted? Perhaps… but all this seemed too real to be a figment of a broken or confused brain. The b
est I could do for the moment was to accept the facts of my condition: I was alive but marooned in a place very far from home.

  I wasn’t the kind of person who cried often or easily but, in the lonely blackness of the first night in a strange land, I wept like I hadn’t since I was a little girl. Great, wracking sobs shook my body and tears bled from my eyes until they were puffy and my nose was clogged with snot. I was tired, hungry, scared, and naked. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be surrounded by family and friends. I whispered a prayer even though I didn’t believe in God. It was said there were no atheists in foxholes. This was my foxhole.

  The silence was more terrifying than rustling in the bushes or even distant howls would have been. The only sounds were when a breeze stirred the leaves. Maybe it should have been reassuring that I wouldn’t become a meal for a nighttime predator but the sense of total isolation was so disconcerting that my mind shied from ruminating about it.

  I considered making plans for tomorrow, but what was there to consider beyond walking and resting and hoping I would encounter something other than trees and bushes? In terms of choosing a direction, the only thing I had to be careful about was not to go in circles. The only thing worse than traveling to an unknown destination was going nowhere. I decided that, once dawn came, I’d start thinking aloud. I needed to hear a voice, even if it was my own. Otherwise, I would surely go mad. (Assuming I hadn’t already.)

  The impenetrable darkness didn’t last as long as I expected it to. Only a few hours after the last rays of the evening twilight had vanished, a faint, silvery light began to filter through the forest canopy. I became aware of it when I saw the outline of my hand as I reached up to brush a lock of hair away from my forehead. A little patience revealed that this wasn’t an indicator of an early dawn but the arrival of a gibbous moon.

  As it rose into the sky, I became aware that this wasn’t like my moon. Even though part of it lay in the planet’s shadow, I could tell it was irregularly shaped. It also seemed smaller and closer. I took notice of the stars as well, silently cursing myself for not having shown more interest in the night sky. But I could detect none of the few constellations I was familiar with. Strange that I could remember such a minor detail with clarity while so much of my past was a hazy jumble. I knew the Big Dipper but I couldn’t remember my mother’s face or name. What had happened to me?