The entire first chapter from
Touch: A Novella...coming September 2011!
Chapter One.
Glimmering black feathers and beady little eyes that never seemed to move from me—that was what flashed through my mind seconds before the blue truck clipped my car—images of the watchful crows from my backyard.
The crows, which had stalked the twisted, bare branches behind my house for days, watching me as though they knew something I didn’t and were waiting for me to figure it all out.
I slammed my foot on the brake pedal in a foolish attempt to stop my car, knowing it was beyond too late for that; impact was seconds away, teasing me in the distance.
The three crows fluttered through my mind again. I remembered vividly how the darkness of their feathers stood out drastically against the powder-white snow below and the endless gray sky above. This was the last image to fill my mind before the sound of metal crunching against metal and shattering glass forced all other thoughts away.
My air bag deployed, snapping my head back as my car continued to slide across the icy blacktop in perfect uncontrollable circles. At some point I closed my eyes, giving in to the darkness which feathered my vision, letting it swallow me whole.
I came to, slumped over the steering wheel, dazed and disoriented, with the front of my car neatly tucked into the snowy folds of a ditch. Sirens began to fill the eerie stillness that surrounded me, while an array of flashing lights bounced off the sheet of snow that had replaced my windshield, blinding me.
My driver’s side door opened with a groan and the shadowy figure of a man took its place.
“Miss, are you okay?” he asked.
The word yes formed in my mind, but I couldn’t be sure of whether or not it found its way to my lips.
“You’re lucky you were wearing your seat belt; the kid in the truck wasn’t,” the man said while moving to lean across me. “I’m just going to unbuckle you.”
I felt the release of my seat belt as gravity slumped me forward, crushing my ribs against the steering wheel.
“Can you walk?” the man asked, seeming kind and concerned.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, my voice sounding strangely far away and not my own.
“Lean on me; I’ll help you.” He was insistent.
“How is she?” Another voice from somewhere in the darkness asked. A female.
“A little disoriented, possible concussion, but no broken bones as far as I can tell,” the man helping me replied.
A tall, slender female stepped to my side. “I’ll take a look.”
I walked with them toward the back of an ambulance, my mind caked in a thick fog. They seated me on a stretcher with wheels and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.
“That was some accident you were in back there,” the female paramedic said. “My name’s Claire; what’s yours?”
“Rowan—Rowan Harper,” I answered, sounding far more calm than I felt.
“Rowan; that’s a pretty name.” She smiled.
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to hold a finger up and I want you to follow it for me,” Claire said.
I tracked her finger with my eyes and let her poke and prod at my face.
“Well, I think you’re going to be just fine. Does your neck hurt at all?”
“No, not really,” I admitted while she gently rolled my head from side to side.
“Good.” She smiled. “You’ve got a slight gash above your brow here.” She touched it with an alcohol-drenched piece of gauze, and I winced. “And your nose might end up being a little swollen and tender for the next few days, but I don’t think it’s broken.”
I could already feel a dull, pulsating pain in my nose and wondered how swollen it would be by tonight.
“You sure are one lucky girl; your injuries could have been far worse,” Claire said.
I forced a slight smile and tried to sound grateful. “I know.”
“Is there anyone we could call to come get you, a parent maybe?” she asked.
I heard Claire’s question, but my eyes had traveled past her to the chaotic scene in front of me. I didn’t know how I had missed him before; walking up the bank to the back of the ambulance I had to have walked directly past him. All that mattered now, though, was that I’d noticed him.
A guy with bright red, curly hair lay flat on his back across the iced-over asphalt. His chest heaved while his lungs visibly struggled for every breath he took. I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
“Rowan, honey, is there a number you’d like me to call for you?” Claire asked, rephrasing her question.
My dad’s cell number absentmindedly fumbled from my lips while I continued to stare at the guy with red curls whose face I couldn’t turn away from. Bits of glass had lodged themselves at odd angles in his forehead and thin rivers of blood trickled to the asphalt.
A paramedic kneeling beside the red-headed guy yelled, “We’re losing him!”
My throat tightened and my heart pounded against my rib cage. My eyes fixated on the guy, along with every other person standing along the sidelines, watching helplessly as three paramedics struggled to save his life. In the commotion my view became obstructed and I began to frantically search the faces of each person hovering around him for any sign of relief.
And that was when I first noticed him.
A complete stranger, who couldn’t have been much older than myself, standing beside the paramedic who knelt at the dying guy’s head. His expression was one of utter calmness as he gazed down at the mangled, bloody face I’d seen moments before. As strange as I found his expression to be, it was not what caught my attention and held it.
I stared because no one else seemed to notice him at all.
The longer my eyes lingered on him, the more I noticed how incredibly out of place he was, standing there unmoving, with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, just staring. I took in his disheveled dark hair which was cut short and his creamy complexion that looked smooth to the touch. He was striking and dressed all in black—a crisp, black, button-up shirt tucked in to black slacks—everything free of wrinkles. Even his scuffed-up Converse sneakers, poking from underneath his pressed slacks, were black.
I stared, captivated, as the dark-haired boy bent down in one fluid motion. I couldn’t see why until a person shifted slightly to their right, which was when I realized he’d moved to touch the tip of his extended middle finger to the dying guy’s forehead. From where I sat, I could see the boy close his eyes. As he did, the dying guy’s body shuddered and then became still, as though his final breath had been forced out of him by a single touch.
“We’ve lost him!” a paramedic shouted, confirming my thought.
My jaw went slack as I watched a see-through image of the now-dead guy step out of himself. A startled noise escaped my mouth and the dark-haired boy’s eyes shifted directly to mine. Even with the distance between us I still was able to make out how incredibly blue they were—an icy, sapphire-blue that would have frozen me in place had I not already been.
A stunned expression swept across his face, but was gone as quickly as it had formed. He stood and placed a hand on the see-through image’s shoulder, and then they both vanished. I stared into the space the boy had occupied until my vision blurred.
Movement on the snow-covered grass to my right caught my attention—three crows had congregated on the sidelines at some point during all of the commotion, and I’d only now spotted them.
My eyes zeroed in on their glossy black feathers and beady little watchful eyes, knowing that something about them held the key to what I’d just witnessed and why. Questions branched out from this thought, crowding my mind and turning it into a tangled mess I could easily become caught in.
“Rowan?” A familiar voice was calling me, forcing me to recoil from the ever-thickening forest of questions in my mind.
“Dad!” I shouted in an effort to better help him find me.
“Oh good,” Claire said. “I was wondering when he’d manage to get here.”
“You and me both,” I muttered under my breath.
“Rowan.” Dad honestly looked happy to see me for the first time since my mother died. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said.
“Is she?” Dad asked, shifting his gaze to Claire.
Claire smiled. “Yes, I think she’ll be fine. She’s got a little gash above her brow, but not bad enough to need stitches. Her nose is going to be swollen and tender for a few days and her neck, along with other areas, may also become sore. I recommend she take some Ibuprofen every four to six hours or as needed.”
“Okay, I’m pretty sure we have some at home. Thank you,” Dad said.
“No problem. There are some things to watch for, though. If she experiences any dizziness or problems with her vision such as spots or blurriness, you should take her to the ER immediately,” Claire said, informing us of potential complications.
I wondered if seeing a dead person’s ghost step out of its body fell under either of those categories, but thought better of asking. A thought occurred to me then—maybe my mother hadn’t been crazy after all, because if she had been, then so was I.
*Hope you enjoyed! :)
