The Harvest (Book 1) (3 page)

“Ok.” She didn’t press for answers.

Austin turned to leave. Roxanne held on to his arm for a second before letting him go. She watched him walk out the door, hoping he’d stop, but he left without looking back. She stood there for several minutes, her eyes anxious, glued to the open doorway. As if she could will him to change his mind, to not investigate those awful sounds.

The phone rang, startling Roxanne from her trance.  “Austin? What’s wrong?”

“Did you call Vicky?”

“Not yet.”

“Hang up and call her. Then call me back. Right now Roxi.”

“Ok. Ok. I’m calling her.”

She called Vicky and tried to explain, but didn’t know what her situation was to even begin to put words to it. Vicky didn’t need verification. If Austin wanted Roxanne out of the city, she wasn’t going to argue with him. Roxanne called Austin back.

“She’ll be here in an hour.”

“As soon as she gets there you leave. No chit chat. No cup of coffee. No look at the nursery. Just get to the farm. Got it?”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” She was a bit irritated at being scared and more so because she didn’t know why she was scared. “You don’t even know what happened yet?”

“Look out the window.” He directed.

“What? Why?”

“Just do what I asked. Please.” He spoke in an easy tone, one of controlled patience.

Roxanne waddled over to the window and peeked through the blinds. Her mouth dropped open. She leaned closer to the window, reaching over to raise the blinds up past her head. She looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, towards the horizon where three suns sat above the water. Roxanne brought the phone to her ear. “Why are there three suns?”

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes were drawn from the triple suns to a white flake floating down from the sky. She watched, mesmerized by the snowflake. Soon others followed. A few flakes landed on the glass and turned to ice.

“Is it snowing?”

“I think so.”

“What does that mean? I mean…it shouldn’t be snowing this far south should it?” Some of the flakes turned to ice pellets. They clinked against the window like tiny pebbles.

“Just stay in the house until Vicky gets there. And then you go straight to the farm.”

“I will. We will.” Her voice was quiet.

“Gotta go Roxi. Call me when you get there.”

“Austin, come back.” She choked on her fear. “Don’t go down there.”

There was a long pause. “I have to honey.” He replied. “I love you. I love you both.” And with a click he was gone.

Roxanne looked around their room, lost. The unseen wheels of cause and effect had been put into motion, she thought, and didn’t wonder why she would think such a thing. Ideas, foreign and often alien, had always come to her from out of nowhere, illogical in the sense they contained no connection or familiarity to anything in her life. Out of practiced she ignored this one as well.

The plinking from the ice pellets that continued to hit the window was the sole sound in the room when an hour later Roxanne, no longer looking dazed, left their bedroom for the last time.

***

The military hangar sat on the edge of a long runway. Out on the tarmac, monstrous whale like cargo planes were already covered in a layer of snow. Austin jumped out of his truck, looked out towards the runway and wondered what the hell, before turning his attention back to the hangar.

The massive hangar doors stood about two feet apart. Austin pulled his handgun from its holster, and approached the door with caution. His foot crunched down on something underneath the layer of snow covering the ground. Crouching down, his eyes glued to the gap in doorway, he cleared away the snow revealing several bullets. The tips were smashed in, but the rest of the shell remained intact. He placed a few in his pocket.

Easing his way up to the door, Austin pressed his body close to the edge of the opening and took a quick peek inside. He leaned back, took a few quick breaths and entered the hangar, his weapon leading the way. After a quick sweep, he lowered his gun.

The macabre sight in front of him made his jaw tighten. It was as bad as she’d shown him it would be, and seeing it for real didn’t diminish the horror. His eyes scanned the mutilated bodies of the soldiers scattered about the hangar. Their condition made counting near impossible. Limbs had been torn and tossed about. Headless torsos lay in dried blood. A group of soldiers lay slumped over, back to back, in a circle facing outward. Their position giving the impression they had attempted to fight the enemy as a unified force.

The further Austin investigated, the thicker his guilt grew. Despite the graphic forewarnings, he still wasn’t prepared. He weaved through the corpses searching for Mitch. After several failed attempts he stumbled upon his friend’s body behind a group of yellow barrels. Dead eyes stared out of a bruised bloody face. Mitch’s chest was ripped open, his organs torn out. In his right hand, he clutched his phone. Austin squatted down next to his friend. “I let you down man.”

With a pen, he moved Mitch’s shirt to the side. On the upper part of his neck were five gouges, four long, one short. Austin traced the air above the marks with the pen, committing the details to memory. Using his cell phone, he snapped a picture of the marks. Looking around for more clues, he realized little evidence of the killers was left behind.

Roxanne
by The Police played from Austin’s cell. “Has Vicky got there yet?” He forced lightness into his voice when he answered.

“Not yet. She called. Said there’s abandoned vehicles all over the highway.” Roxanne reported without emotion. “What’s going on there?” Her voice was not anxious as he would have expected.

“Not sure yet.” He lied. “I’m goin’ over to headquarters. I’ll call you later ok?”

After a pause, she asked tonelessly. “Did you find what you expected?”

The sound in her voice, as much as the question, caught him off guard, but he didn’t have time to think it through. “No. Nothing. Just…just weird is all.” He closed his eyes to the death that surrounded him. “I gotta go Roxi. Stay there. Wait for Vicky. I’ll call soon.”

“Don’t go Austin. Just come home. We’ll go somewhere together. Back to Deadbear. We had fun there. Remember?”

“Deadbear? What do you mean?” This Austin could not ignore, Roxi knew he would never go back to his childhood home.

There was a long silence. “No not Deadbear. I don’t know why I said that.” She replied, confusion in her voice. “I just want you with me.”

“I know Roxi. But I can’t…I just can’t. Ok? You understand?”

After a long pause, Roxanne gave in. “I understand. I love you Austin.”

“Love you both.” He hung up, put his wife’s strange comment out of his mind, and dialed another number. The endless ringing on the other end reinforced his theory. His postulation that the recurring nightmare wasn’t what he wanted or pretended it to be. He’d been wrong. He shook his head. Not wrong. He’d chosen to ignore her, to compartmentalize the images as a product of his disastrous childhood. A meager attempt at holding on to normal, something he’d known little about until meeting Roxi. Roxanne, he whispered. A twinge of regret pierced his heart.

The twinge was not due to his broken promise. Not because he failed to keep his word to always share what he foresaw, good or bad. And this was bad. It was evilness beyond depravity to the point of being obscene. But it was the depths of its very depravity that were the root cause for why he hadn’t told Roxi the truth, and why he’d believed these things would ever come to pass. The twinge was the pang of reality screaming at him.

Austin fingered the scar on top of his right hand, processing the sights surrounding him and thinking about the past. The scar, a constant reminder of his first brush with death and the first time he’d seen the spirit girl.

He’d only been nine when he fell through the ice and declared dead for exactly seventy seven seconds. After his revival as the medics were shoving his stretcher into the back of the ambulance he’d caught his first glimpse of her.

At first he’d thought maybe he had died and she was an illusion or a ghost. Not because she wasn’t appropriately dressed for the freezing cold and seemed not to notice or be noticed by anyone except him. It was because of her eyes. Solid black ovals that were dark as pitch, exaggerated by her translucent skin so pale she seemed to shimmer in the wind.

In the beginning she’d kept to the shadows, never exposing herself for long and never when adults were present. If they were alone she’d venture out into the open, but always maintained a safe distance. Austin shared his clothes and she shared glimpses of the future, of things that were about to occur, other times she only watched him, and although Austin talked to her she never spoke. Later on he came to refer to her as Eve, for what reason he gave her this name he didn’t know. In his mind the name fit. Eve was never mentioned to anyone and especially not his father.

Months turned into a year and Austin kept his secret friend and the things she showed him to himself. He never questioned the abnormality of her being there. For in his child’s mind she was his friend, his only friend, and in his world that was gold.

One night the old man went out drinking and left Austin behind, locked in his room for some imagined infraction of Reynolds’ house rules. While stumbling home, he’d slipped and fell, knocking his head on the ice.

The next morning the sheriff came to the house with the news. Austin remained silent while Sheriff Riggs told him the details of his father’s death and how they found him only two blocks from the house. That the sheriff felt it appropriate to discuss this with a child didn’t occur to Austin until he was older. It was as if Riggs blamed him for not being there, because despite being a despicable father, the old man was popular amongst the degenerates, which included the sheriff.

After his father’s death he’d refused to acknowledge Eve, thinking she’d known his father was going to die, and should have warned him. Soon afterwards she’d disappeared from Deadbear. A year went by and Austin, having moved to Florida to live with his Aunt and Uncle, gave up on ever seeing her again.

On his eighteenth birthday she’d returned, and he’d felt an unexplainable relief, even joy, over her coming back into his life. But he’d sensed she was different, more reclusive as if she didn’t want to be with him.

That wasn’t the only change; the images she revealed took on a dark sinister tone. Death became the norm. Airplane crashes, mass shootings, random explosions killing hundreds, all things that came true within minutes, sometimes seconds, after seeing them. He’d scour the news for validation, growing anxious if he couldn’t find proof, but never allowing himself to hope that this time the nightmare didn’t come true. They always came true.

It was a maddening curse to see future events play out before him, as clear as watching them on a movie screen, but unable to prevent them from taking place. At times he’d felt she was punishing him and demanded that she explain. She never complied.

Austin couldn’t stay angry at her, for fear she would leave him again. Upon entering the military, Eve surprised him by taking on the role of his guide and protector, ensuring he knew of all harm coming his way. Once again he felt close to her.

He learned to disguise the visions, fooling his teammates into thinking they were lucky guesses. They hadn’t minded Austin’s uncanny ability to predict the future. All things considered, he’d saved their lives a few times over and they were grateful. But he knew it wasn’t him, it was Eve who’d saved them.

With the military he felt like he belonged, like he had a family, but not until he’d met Roxi did he share for the first time about Eve. An unseen force had compelled him to tell Roxi all of his secrets. She had accepted his tale without judgment, never making him feel like he was a freak or that she feared him. He’d promised to always share, to not carry the burden alone and she’s promised to always believe in him.

Soon after meeting Roxi, Eve’s visits became infrequent and then ceased all together, as if Roxi by loving him had granted him a normal life. The greatest gift she could have given him, second only to their unborn son. Yet despite joining the ranks of convention for the first time in his life, Austin missed Eve.

But he’d kept his promise for two years, telling Roxi everything without fail, which turned out to be very little after Eve made herself scarce. He’d almost convinced himself this normal could go on forever when Eve reentered his life. He remembered the moment vividly. It was the moment things began to unravel, when calm turned to chaos.

It was just after returning home from a friend’s party where they’d announced the news they were expecting. They were excited and happy. Later that night, after they’d celebrated in a more personal manner, Austin lay awake listening to his wife breathe as she slept. If asked, Austin would have said it was the happiest time of his life. He would have later added that he’d known it wouldn’t last.

When Eve appeared, standing in his bathroom doorway, he wasn’t surprised. She’d beckoned him to come to her and he did, sliding from the bed quiet as a whisper so as not to disturb Roxi. A fierce desire to protect his wife and unborn child prodded him to handle Eve’s presence in secrecy. For despite Roxi knowing about Eve, they’d never been introduced.

Upon entering the bathroom expecting to find her waiting, he was instead confronted by visions of the most heinous scene. The scene he was now standing in the middle of inside the hangar. The images were more graphic than any Eve had shown him in the past, so keeping it from Roxi had been a matter of protection not deceit.

Eve continued to appear to him over the next few months, always beckoning, always leading him to this carnage, but never giving him clues to the where or when. Today he had the where and when, but not the why. And he was no closer to knowing who she was or why she’d chosen him. Austin took in a deep breath, letting it out slow. There was no point in bemoaning what ifs. Had he chosen to believe this would one day come to fruition it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.