Unseen (Amy's Story)

80 Pages·2016·0.5 MB·English

by  Grant Ann

Cover photograph by Ann Grant
Cover design by Kealan Patrick Burke
Book design by Kealan Patrick Burke
Published by Expedition Books

© 2012 by Ann Grant

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of
the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a
review.
For my father

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Author

“All war is deception.”
Sun Tzu

Chapter 1
I saw the stranger on Long Lane when I climbed over the rise in the field.
The good looking blond was in his late twenties or early thirties, ambling
through the fog in jeans and a hunter green coat. He raised an eyebrow.
Wondering if he’d heard me ranting about my boyfriend’s car accident, I
shortened my German shepherd’s leash to give him time to pass us. Ever since
the accident I’d been taking my dog out to isolated areas where I could throw
every swear word I knew at the sky. The last thing I wanted was some guy
listening to me.
Nikki pricked her ears and moved her wolfish body through the tall grass
to the pavement. Usually the road cleared when I took her for a walk, but not
that day. The man slowed down by the fence as if he wanted to say something.
By then I couldn’t avoid eye contact, so I gave in and nodded.
“Beautiful dog,” he said, staring at me.
“Yeah, she’s my best friend,” I replied, walking by him.
“I’m looking for Meade Road.”
I turned around. A tourist. No camera, but I should have known.
Somebody who’d driven here in the dead of winter to see the battlefield.
“I’m house sitting near Meade,” I said. The second I said it, I couldn’t
believe I let that out. “Are you driving or walking?”
He gave me an amused smile. “Walking.”
I flushed under his gaze. Of course he was walking, but I’d thought maybe
he’d parked nearby. There was something odd about his right hand. He had six
fingers. A polydactyl, some kind of birth defect. I didn’t want to stare and turned
to the field.
“Meade’s over there on the ridge.” I pointed to the foggy horizon. “You
can walk across the field or you can follow Long Lane around to the Rec Park
and cut up through the Armory. There’s some snow in the field so you might
want to take the road.”
Nikki made a low noise in the back of her throat and nosed my leg.
“We expanded here this year,” the man said. “I own the Grasslands.” Both
of his hands had six long, perfect fingers, not just the right one. I’d never seen
anything like it and caught myself staring again. “You’ll have to come out when
we open.”
So I was talking to local royalty. The Grasslands was a resort under
construction in the middle of wild nowhere off Route 15. The plans for a soaring
dome and an open-air restaurant surrounded by exotic ornamental grasses had
been all over the newspapers. The Grasslands was supposed to revitalize the
area, but I didn’t get it. The place was too remote. And six weeks ago, Ben had
died in a terrible car accident on the same rural road. I had no intention of ever
going out there.
“Amy Wong,” I said. “I missed your name.”
His eyes flickered to a Honda as it passed us. “John Savenue. You live
here?”
I hesitated. “I’m from D.C., but I go to Gettysburg College. Look, I’ve got
to be someplace right now.” Which was a lie, but I’d picked up a faint taunt
behind his eyes and didn’t want to stand there any longer with him. I nodded
goodbye, reeled in my dog, and took off in the opposite direction, intending to
take a roundabout way to the Rec Park in case he went the same way. I’d left my
Jeep in the parking lot when Nikki and I began our hike.
Something told me to glance back. The six-fingered man was still there,
staring at me, and then he loped across the field. Strange guy. When he reached
the creek, something fell out of his coat on the bank. I almost called after him,
but I stopped myself. He was too far away to hear me.
“Come on,” I told Nikki. “Let’s go see.”
He’d dropped his cell phone. It took me a while to find it in the ice-
encrusted grass, but the cover wouldn’t slide back or flip open. I put it in my
pocket. John Savenue. I’d look him up when I got to the house. It was the decent
thing to do even though he gave me the creeps.

*

I was house sitting for my Chinese Lit professor, Richard Wu, who was
snorkeling with his new wife in the Florida Keys over the Thanksgiving break.
The fog had burned off by the time I pulled up to his home in Fairfield. That’s
the next town over from the battlefield. It has one main street surrounded by
miles of cornfields and pastures.
Luna, the professor’s ancient Husky, greeted me at the door. The two
hundred year old fieldstone house had a million books, beautiful contemporary
furniture, and stood in thirty acres of woods, which was the main reason I’d
agreed to watch it. I could lie on the couch all night with the dogs at my feet and
listen to Ben’s favorite jazz without having to answer to anybody.
A message was on the house phone.
“Hey, Amy.” Mike, one of my roommates. “How come your cell phone’s
off? I’m in the Giant and thought I’d share some Chinese takeout with my
favorite Chinese chick. Eggrolls, broccoli with garlic sauce, lo mein. Call me in
the next five minutes.”
Too late. He’d called an hour ago. I’d get back to him after I thawed out. I
pulled off my damp socks, started a pot of coffee, found rawhide bones for the
dogs, and called 411. The system paused when I said John Savenue’s name and
kicked me over to a human being.
“Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,” I repeated. “John Savenue.”
“In Gettysburg and the surrounding area, there is no listing for a John
Savenue,” the operator said.
“Well, then, the Grasslands. It might be near Cashtown.”
“One moment.” A beat, and then: “There is no listing for the Grasslands.”
I hung up. The Grasslands was still under construction. How did anybody
get in touch with the guy then? It was getting too complicated. Well, I wasn’t
going to worry about the phone. I could mail the thing if I ever found an address.
Or maybe I’d just throw it in a drawer.
I headed upstairs, changed into dry jeans, a black turtleneck and hoodie,
and fastened my long hair in a ponytail. I’m told I have a pretty face with bold
eyes. My mother’s Chinese-American, my father a mystery. I have her eyes and
high cheekbones, but I don’t know if I resemble my father or not because she
took a pair of scissors, cut his face out of all the photos in the family album, and
destroyed the digital pictures of the two of them together. He disappeared five
months before my sister and I were born.
A scrabbling sound in the hall interrupted my thoughts. Nikki had
probably padded upstairs, but I didn’t see her around. When I heard it again, I
cracked the hall door to the attic. Small wings fluttered up into the darkness. A
bird must have trapped itself up there, or even a bat, which should have been
hibernating.
I found a flashlight, crept up the narrow stairs, and pulled the light string.
A bare bulb clicked on and threw its low light across the long attic floor. No
wings, no ugly little bat face under the rafters. A couple more steps and I shone
the flashlight over a painted chair, some luggage and cardboard boxes, and
peered into the deeper shadows beyond the chimney.
No sign of anything. The lights must have driven it into hiding.
“Look, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said and opened one of the tiny
windows on the closest wall. Icy air gusted inside. Whatever was in the attic
would probably leave as soon as I did. Mission accomplished. I pulled the light
string. The attic fell into darkness, and then I stumbled over a box. John
Savenue’s cell phone slipped out of my hoodie and rattled across the
floorboards.
“Wonderful,” I blurted, expecting to spend the next half hour crawling
around trying to find it, but the flashlight beam picked up the phone in the dust.
Thin lines rippled across the surface. Surprised, I shone the flashlight on it again,
not sure what to think.
The thing was light sensitive, and whatever it was, it wasn’t a cell phone.
Solid lines flamed along the rim, followed by brilliant red symbols that
resembled the Greek alphabet: a backwards E with a snaking tail, an upside
down U, a triangle, a trident. Curious, I touched the triangle to see if it would
open the cover.
Seconds later, a silver probe shot out and seized my wrist.
“Oh, my God,” I gasped and dropped the flashlight, which spun around in
a crazy, wobbling circle. Distorted shadows flew over the walls. When I tried to
pry the probe off my wrist, it tightened even more.

Chapter 2

Tingling pain spread through my hand. The shadows on the walls and the
flashlight beam dissolved away and I found myself beside a hooded man on a
rocky plain under a high sun. My mouth went dry. Just as a scream rose in my
throat, I realized I could still feel the attic floor beneath my feet. The scene had
to be an illusion or a projection of some kind.
Then I lost the feeling of the attic floor altogether and floated behind the
man as if I were a ghost. My heartbeat was so loud I thought it would make him
turn around, but he didn’t seem to realize I was there. I couldn’t see his face and
couldn’t move past him. A small silver box between his shoulder blades seemed
to link us together. For a terrifying moment I wondered what would happen if
the link broke. Maybe I would float up into the hard blue sky and drift away
forever.
The slender man wore a short-sleeved gray jumpsuit with a black cloth
hood and held his sunburned arms behind his back. His wrists were tied. A
prisoner.
Someone behind us gave him a rough prod with a stick.
“Go on,” a man’s calm voice said with mock politeness. My heart leaped
again. Did he see me? Another man laughed and said something about a race to
the finish line. They spoke English, but their voices were distorted, as if they
were underwater or talking from a tremendous distance. I tried to turn to see
their faces, but couldn’t, and they didn’t seem to see me, either.
The prisoner began to cross a black lava field covered with fissures. As I
floated after him, trailed by his tormentors, I wondered what he’d done. Maybe
he was a murderer, or this was the bad end of a drug deal gone south, or perhaps
he was a political prisoner about to pay the price for speaking up. He stumbled
several times, trying to balance himself without the use of his hands, and
hesitated before a wide fissure.
One of his tormentors struck him in the shoulder with the stick.
The prisoner drew a sharp breath, lost his footing, and fell on his knees and
side. I braced myself to hit the rocks, but my phantom face passed through his
shoulder and the lava field and came up again. When he rolled, I rolled with him,
still attached to his back. Then he caught himself and, breathing hard, struggled
up in mute dignity.
“Oh, he’s dancing,” the man with the calm voice said.
The other man laughed. Their shadows lengthened as we went on. For a
while one man carried the stick behind his head with his elbows up and his
hands casually looped over it. Then he lowered the stick, pretended to strike the
prisoner, and laughed again.
The sun had moved down the sky to our backs, so we had to be walking to
the east. Which told me nothing, but I was determined to identify the place.
Hills covered with rainforest began to rise beside the lava field. A huge
stone wall emerged from under the green tangle of trees to wind unsteadily into
the horizon. The wall grew higher as we went on. Loud insects chirred in a lazy
crescendo and vines with blood red flowers snaked up the trunks of the towering
trees.
The shadows lengthened again. We were heading downhill now. The lava
field opened up to reveal waves crashing over a rough shore. I expected to
breathe in salty sea air, but couldn’t smell anything. Just as I had no sense of
touch, I had no sense of smell, either.
Steam rose from the water, which meant the lava was still flowing. So we