Wake of Darkness Read online

  Wake of Darkness

  Meg Winkler

  Wake of Darkness

  © Copyright 2012 by Meg Winkler

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Meg Winkler

  Cover Image © zdenek kintr– Fotolia.com

  Published by The Brainy Babe Micro Pub

  Visit www.thebrainybabe.com

  Wake of Darkness

  Meg Winkler

  C’est la guerre.

  That’s war.

  Chapter 1

  Present Day—A Small College Town in Texas

  Sophie didn’t speak to anyone, not so much because she didn’t want to, but because she really didn’t have to. She struggled with Herculean effort to listen to the last words of the professor and ignore the thoughts of the guy next to her—they were familiar, faintly disturbing, incredibly irritating—but tuning out the thoughts of others wasn’t always the easiest thing to do. Today it was proving to be extremely difficult. If she really concentrated though, she could block the voices out...sometimes.

  She debated idly if she could pound some sense into him and smiled darkly at the thought, imagining it. She thought about what it would be like to rip his throat out, but she wasn’t that strong. Granted, she’d never actually tried to rip someone’s throat out…She glared at him through narrowed eyes and a subtle growl from deep within her chest found its way up to her throat.

  No, as much as she might like to resort to violence, it wasn’t the answer…or so that’s what the proverbial “they” always said. She sighed despite the boiling frustration and closed her eyes, rubbed the sides of her head and tried to block him out, hoping it would work. After a fruitless moment, she dropped her hands on the desk in frustration. Today it just wasn’t working. She wondered again, as she had on so many previous occasions, if she was alone; if anyone could truly understand what she went through on a daily basis. Wasn’t there anyone else in the world who could hear every single, intimate thought of those around them? More importantly, if there were, then where were they?

  If she thought about it too long, the other terrifying question that haunted her would creep into her mind. It was the one she hated to ask, but the one that was the most persistent: what if there wasn’t anyone who could empathize? She shook her head quickly to chase that demonic thought away; she wouldn’t let herself go down that road again.

  Her classmate grinned at her until he finally paid enough attention to her eyes for the black look in them to register. They locked stares and he immediately looked away and shifted nervously in his seat, avoiding her glare. She rolled her eyes and tried to shift her attention back to the professor. When the eternal hour was finally up, her eyes bored into the same guy, precisely at the moment he was checking out her butt, catching him in the act, and completely off guard again. The same growl threatened to claw its way upward, but she held herself together as she hastened to the door, relieved to be outside before the rest of her classmates, and away from the lewd mental comments she was being bombarded with.

  She took in a deep, cleansing breath and reveled in her liberation from the classroom before anyone else. Escaping outside, she sighed in the fresh air. Sophie found her transient peace in moments like this, just before the rest of the student body poured out of doorways like hundreds of little ants, scrambling to get away from the dreaded classrooms, their minds swirling freely.

  And…here they come, she thought.

  She froze where she stood, regardless for those filing around her, closed her eyes and concentrated on not hearing the unfiltered chaos of thoughts which swarmed around her. She didn’t care that people had to stop short and swerve quickly in their path to avoid hitting her—she could feel the insanely subtle movement of air around her as her frustrated peers dodged her. Today was a bad day, and it took all she had in her not to scream at the insanity of it all. One therapist had suggested meditation as a means for exorcising the voices that he hadn’t really believed were real anyway. Sophie didn’t have a mantra though.

  Their thoughts flooded her mind. Sophie imagined what being trapped in a whirlpool was like. She figured it wouldn’t be much different: disorienting, chaotic, choking. Sometimes it felt like she was drowning. She’d been crazy to think she could lead a normal life; that she could go to school and be a typical co-ed.

  College was a bad idea, she thought to herself for about the millionth time.

  Taking a deep breath, Sophie forced the useless thoughts from her brain and focused instead on her breathing, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. Soon, she felt a tentative calm settle over her, but part of her waited for the calm to suddenly retreat as it invariably did; the peace was always too short.

  She reluctantly opened her eyes when she knew she could walk away from the building. She looked around. A strange feeling crawled up her arms and burrowed itself into her brain as she scanned her surroundings. Life had taught her to be aware of people lurking in the shadows. She was always the first one in a crowd who knew when something was off, when something didn’t feel quite right, but she didn’t often feel the strange urge that she was being watched—until recently. As she experienced this still new sensation, she knew that she wasn’t in danger…at least she didn’t think she was, but she definitely felt like someone was watching her.

  And as she scanned the façade of the buildings towering over the little courtyard in which she now stood, Sophie was struck with the strangest feeling that maybe she didn’t want to go. That maybe, she wanted to run back inside the building she’d just emerged from. She’d been so relieved to be out of the history building moments ago—as always—but at the same time, she felt the imperative urge to turn back. Without thinking, she instinctively turned back towards the structure. The impulse was so strong that she had to consciously fight the urge that nearly sent her back to find the source of the itching desire. She dreaded facing all of the people she’d run into along the way, or rather, hearing all of them, and that dread inevitably won over, but just barely. She shook her head quickly in a futile attempt to chase the nagging feeling away and continued stubbornly on her path away from the building determined to keep her eyes from it lest she be tempted to turn back.

  Sophie walked along the sidewalk out of the courtyard towards the little downtown square that was her destination nearly every day at this time. She always liked to escape the mental hustle and bustle for a quiet cup of coffee whenever she could. Try as she might, Sophie couldn’t keep herself from glancing back up at the building, looming down at her in its majestic modernity. She was certain someone was watching her—she could feel that presence on her back. She thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d seen a familiar face staring down at her from the second floor. Through the foggy tinted windows of the retro structure, he seemed to be someone she recognized, but she couldn’t tell precisely why he was so familiar. The most unsettling part was that she couldn’t hear what he was thinking. She couldn’t figure out why he was staring at her. The realization made her shudder. She dragged her eyes away as quickly as possible, pulled her sweater around her body and wished, again, that she were invisible.

  No, I take that back, she thought to herself. I wish I were somebody else.

  She shivered. As the chills threatened to shake her to her core, she didn’t try to figure out if it was the weather or the man who caused the reaction. She tried to put the thought out of her mind as she hastily walked towards the square and concentrated again on relaxing her body and mind, refusing to think about the man who was so familiar and whose mind was completely silent.

  Instead, her thoughts drifted back to the frat boy who’d been ogling her in class. If he’d only known what she’d heard in his disgusting little brain. She laughed bitterly at the thought as she walked a
long, hoping to ease the stress that tensed her body like a violin sting. It didn’t do any good for her to be so keyed up. It was moments like this that her temper was quicker and her emotions hotter than usual. She inhaled the brisk, chilly air heavily, feeling it dry and sting her throat as it helped clear her mind.

  Today the downtown square was bustling with art students and jocks tossing footballs on the courthouse square. Drug-stained kids of ex-hippies played bongo drums on the corner, their audience snapping at the end of the interpretive song. Sophie chuckled at their beatnik mimicry.

  It was a day like any other in her town. The thoughts of the people here sounded much more like what she would think the hubbub of a crowded lecture hall would sound like to a normal person. Occasionally, something was shouted in someone’s head loud enough for her to hear, but most of the time she was able to tune the madness out to a dull, minimally distracting roar.

  It was an eclectic sort of town where old men gathered at the courthouse on Saturday mornings to play bluegrass on the lush, green front lawn in the shadow of the archaic Confederate soldier monument. Where the local burger joint—built from an old filling station and garage—played host to several different types of people, depending on the day: Friday nights belonged to local college students; Saturday evenings to empty-nesters; and Sundays to guest musicians who took over the make-shift patio strung with multi-colored lights made for Christmas trees. It was the kind of town where everyone talked to everyone else walking around the square. Geeks wandered shamelessly into the comic store, hipsters argued outside the record shop. Everyone greeted each other with small-town hospitality which wasn’t a relic of American antiquity here; it was an everyday reality.

  Her favorite coffee shop sat on the square, on her favorite street: Pecan. She ducked into Bean There, giggling to herself at the name once again, and ordered a tall, black coffee, careful to concentrate on not listening to anyone’s thoughts. It was easier with so few people around, to ignore their thoughts, but it still took a great deal of exhausting concentration not to hear the private secrets of those around her

  She made random eye contact with a fellow student and his face broke out in a wide, friendly smile. She hesitantly smiled back, seeing herself in his mind’s eye. Her shockingly bright green eyes looked at him from her porcelain face slightly paler than “normal”, and her auburn hair was what this man considered sexy: slightly wavy, full, and hanging just past her shoulders. He contemplated walking up to her as his eyes ran up down her dancer-like figure, and asking for her number, but her quickly diverted eyes discouraged him and he soon turned to walk out of the coffee shop. She sighed to herself as she listened to him, relieved that his mind didn’t automatically turn to less appropriate thoughts, as was usually the case with men who encountered her. She smiled to herself: There was hope for men yet.

  She paid for her coffee and stepped reluctantly back outside to brave the chill in the air, to sit on the little teetering heart-shaped wire chairs right outside the doors. It was really too cold for that type of behavior, but she could be relatively alone there; the thoughts of passing pedestrians were easily confused for vocal utterances outdoors, and that was comforting. Of course, she knew from experience that she could hear spoken words better than the people around her. Too many times, she’d caught the grumbling of a professor as he muttered something under his breath, or the sigh of an exasperated cashier from a few hundred yards away at the grocery store.

  Today, the discomfort of sitting out in the chill was worth the peace it afforded, the streets were largely uninhabited. She gripped her coffee and watched the steam billow from the slit in the lid, relishing the act of normalcy, because—as Sophie was keenly aware—she was decidedly not normal. She let her mind wander for a while: people watching, taking in the sights of the square, surveying the courthouse and its stately granite façade, noticing a shop she kept meaning to step into, and feeling the wind tickle her hair, before her roving eyes slowly settled on someone she hadn’t noticed before, someone sitting opposite her on a bench on the courthouse lawn. She picked him from the crowded streets because he didn’t look natural, or more accurately, he looked out of place. He was massive and built like an athlete, and should have been hurling a football to some of his friends, but instead, he just sat there, pretending not to watch her. She’d initially failed to notice him because his mind was silent to her; it hadn’t demanded any of her attention. A shiver went up Sophie’s spine as that realization hit, but she couldn’t pull her eyes from him immediately, as she was certain she should. There was nothing that logically screamed danger about his posture, but she was really starting to get creeped out.

  Ever since the start of the semester, it seemed like there were continually men staring at her, although not in the same way that guys looked at her in class. She knew—as she watched him—that she’d seen him before. He’d followed her to the library one afternoon after class; had watched her cross the street a few days before that, as he stood silently under the shade of a building on campus. There was no menace, no sexual undercurrent; no real danger to his manner. She’d been an unwilling student of human behavior for too long not to understand simple body language. There was something else completely different about these men specifically—And why had it only been men? she asked herself—who simply watched her, and she could never get a reading off of them. That was what haunted her the most. Well, that and the fact that she couldn’t turn the corner without running into some gorgeous sandy-haired guy. The irony over the situation was not lost on her. Weren’t hordes of admirers every girl’s dream? Her own admirers, or watchers, as Sophie affectionately dubbed them—because “stalker” wasn’t all that flattering, and really pretty frightening if she thought about it—seemed to be at every turn. She never seemed to be able to go anywhere without one of them being.

  Of course! She thought, not oblivious to the fact that the jock in cowboy boots started in his seat at just the exact moment of her revelation.

  Her mind raced forward, putting the puzzle pieces together. She hadn’t realized it before, but the man in the window was precisely the same guy she’d seen almost every day since the start of the semester. He was everywhere. She’d seen him at the library, glaring—but not quite glaring—at her over the tops of books; under the shade of an ancient oak tree; in the Union, and of course, today. And now there was this one, subtly staring at her from across the street while he perused the newspaper.

  And who reads newspapers now, anyway? Doesn’t he have a tablet, or an iPhone, or something?

  He moved from his spot, standing as if to approach her, and she started feeling the prickly feeling of the fight or flight response kicking in. Her breathing accelerated as she further connected the dots. She could tell she was starting to freak out, on the verge of having a panic attack, if she wasn’t careful. It felt like there were little pin-pricks at the back of her neck, her hands became clammy, and she was going to start seeing spots if she didn’t make a concerted effort to chill out.

  Calm down, Sophie, she thought to herself. She closed her eyes and concentrated on steadying her breath again. It didn’t stop her from getting up from her seat, though. She opened her eyes quickly and abandoned her coffee without a second thought, yielding to the instinctual response that coursed through her veins.

  She headed out of the square, but not before shooting him a brave, albeit dirty look for ruining her afternoon beak. She resolutely turned her back on him and walked from the square, feeling the warmth under her skin boil to the surface. She breathed a sigh and the heat slowly faded.

  “Temper, temper!” one of her foster mothers—when she was still a small child—had chastised gently when something small would set her off like that.

  After she’d walked about half a block, and had glanced behind herself enough, Sophie was satisfied that she wasn’t being followed. Her overreaction may have been a little unjustified, but she wasn’t about to stick around to find out, just in case.

  She
hated the fearful part of herself that had recently surfaced in reaction to these mysterious men. The vulnerability they elicited was unsettling to say the least, and she’d been through enough in her life to be the type not to run away. Normally, she fought back—running away was unacceptable—but not today. Not ever, with these people.

  The wind whipped through the trees around her as she walked along, whistling almost silently through the branches and leaves. There was a rare cold front, even for a Texas mid-November afternoon, in the air. As she walked up the slanted sidewalk, she pulled her sweater together over her chest and crossed her arms to keep the chill out. She chastised herself for attempting to wear one of her favorite chiffon tops on a day like today, as she walked back towards campus along her favorite downtown street. She took a deep breath and slowed even more, taking in the welcoming sights of the historic district. Since she’d reasoned that she wasn’t being followed, she was not going to waste the opportunity to walk up the street on the way back to her dorm, no matter how far out of the way it was.

  Everything about that street was a familiar comfort to her and the only sound today, aside from the occasional car passing by, was the crush of acorn tops under her feet on the pavement as they rolled almost therapeutically under her toes. She loved all the old houses; each one was different. She felt a strange connection to them, but she’d always chalked it up to her interest in history and her silly tendency towards nostalgia, rather than giving the feeling any other significance. Such old houses conjured up her unrealistic ideas about the perfect family with a mom who loved to cook—and incidentally stayed at home, a dad who proudly brought home the paycheck every week, brothers and sisters playing in the yard, and a dog lounging on the porch. Never mind that Sophie’s version of the perfect family was something right out of 1950s television, complete with home-baked cookies, crisp aprons, tire swings, and white picket fences. To her—the serial foster child—it was the closest thing to heaven she could imagine. She longed for a family of her own, one way or another; a place to would belong.