Professor Trueblood watched from the door of Wesley Hall as they
hurried down the concrete stairs. Once away from him, they walked slowly side by
side.
They walked through the warm night in silence. Then Melanie asked, “How’s your
nose?”
“It’ll live.” He sniffed. “I think the bleeding’s stopped.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“It’s nothing.” He looked at her. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Oh, Bodie,” she whispered. Her arm slipped around his back, her small hand warm
on his hip. “It’s something terrible.”
“I know. I saw.”
“Not that. I mean…what I saw.”
“What you saw?”
“My dad. It must’ve been Dad. Or my sister.” Her hand tightened on Bodie’s hip.
“God. He…he must be dead. One of them, anyway. I…damn it.” She sobbed. “I don’t
know which one. But Dad, I think. When it happened last time, it was Mom.”
Bodie stopped. He turned and stared down into her glistening eyes. Her sorrow
made a thickness in his throat and a tight hurt in his chest. But her words…
What was she saying?
He tucked the handkerchief into his pocket and gently took hold of her
shoulders. Too late, he realized he had blood on his fingers. “I want to
understand,” he said.
Melanie stiffened. She lowered her head and wiped her nose with a cuff. “There
was something coming at me,” she said in a shaky voice. “Only not at
me. It was dark and noisy and running at me and I knew I had
to get out of the way or it would kill me, but I didn’t have time, it was too
fast and it got me. It got me.”
Bodie pulled her gently against him. She lowered her face against the side of
his neck. He felt its wetness, the tickle of her eyelashes. “That’s what
happened in your mind?” he whispered. “While you were…shaking and stuff?”
He felt her nod. “Jesus,” he muttered.
“When it happened before, I was eleven and at summer camp. It was Mom that
time.”
She had told Bodie about the loss of her mother, the woman slipping in the
bathtub, smashing her head and drowning. “You had a vision or whatever then —
like tonight?” he asked.
“Not exactly like tonight. But yes. That’s why I know Dad’s dead.”
“You don’t know it,” Bodie said. “Not for sure.”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on. Let’s get back to the apartment. You can call home. Maybe everything’s
fine.”
All signs point to foul play.
Melanie Conway knows something is wrong when she starts having visions again.
Her boyfriend, Bodie, wants to help but they are too late. Her father has been
in a hit and run accident. Melanie’s sister, Penelope, is having problems of her
own. She keeps receiving strange calls. Bodie is drawn into the mystery and gets
more than he bargained for.
Previously Published in 1992
Horror [Samhain Publishing, On Sale: June 14, 2016, e-Book
(reprint), ISBN: 9781619233362 / eISBN: 9781619233362]
Richard Laymon was born in Chicago and grew up in California. He earned a BA
in English Literature from Willamette University, Oregon and an MA from Loyola
University, Los Angeles. He worked as a schoolteacher, a librarian, and a report
writer for a law firm, and was the author of more than thirty acclaimed novels.
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