Omens (Cainsville 1)

When she said nothing, I looked around, but saw only the gnarled, fog-misted trees. I started to rise. She caught my hand and tried to tug me down.

"They're resting," she said.

"Who's resting?"

The croak of a raven answered. I looked over my shoulder to see one perched on a branch, pecking at the pale bark. The girl leapt to her feet and waved her arms.

"Shoo! You aren't supposed to be here."

The raven fixed her with one beady eye and croaked in protest, but took flight, soaring off over our heads.

The girl sat again and threw her sticks, and I saw that the sticks were bones. Polished white finger bones.

White bones against black rock.

Black rock on the edge of a pit filled with murky water, stinking like a swamp. More rocks piled above it. A waterfall. A dry waterfall.

My garden.

The raven swooped past. The girl waved her fist at it. "Ewch i ffwrdd, bran!"

She turned to me. "The bran know better," she said. "They aren't to disturb the dead. It's disrespectful."

"The dead?"

She waved at the tree and the mist began to clear, as if swept away, and I saw that the gnarled trunk wasn't a trunk at all. It was a corpse. Bound to a dead tree, arms spread, naked and bald, empty eye sockets, skin an oddly marbled red and white.

Then the last of the mist cleared and I saw the marble surface wasn't skin. There was no skin.

I stumbled back and wheeled to see that every tree was the crucifix for a flayed corpse. That's when I started to scream.

I woke up still screaming. I clapped my hands over my mouth and huddled there, heart pounding as I strained for any sign that I'd woken up the whole building. But all stayed silent.

When I closed my eyes, I saw the corpses again. I saw those horrible, flayed bodies and a half-remembered rumor about the Larsens surfaced.

I vaulted from bed and made it as far as the bathroom door before hurling my last meal onto the freshly scrubbed tiles.

I returned to bed but couldn't get back to sleep. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw that raw muscle and sinew and--

I couldn't get back to sleep.

I called James. I couldn't help myself. But I did manage, halfway through dialing his number, to stop, think, and punch in his work number instead. He wouldn't be there. That was the point. I listened to his voice message, hung up, called back, and listened again, feeling my heart rate slow, the dream fading into wisps that floated away as he asked me again to leave a message. That time I did. Just a brief, "Hey, wanted to let you know I'm okay. Hope you got the car."

Hope you got the car. I'd broken off our engagement. I'd thrown the ring at him and stolen his car and run into the night ... and that was the best I could come up with? Yes, it was.

While hearing James's recorded voice helped, I still couldn't sleep. Finally I broke down and took a pill. That only made things worse. Now I dozed in twilight sleep, dreams and hallucinations rolling into an endless drama. I'd see those bodies in my room, hanging from the walls, lying on the bed, sitting up and talking to me.

Then I'd see the Larsens. But I wasn't seeing them with the corpses. It might have been better if I did. Instead I dreamed of them, laughing and teasing and singing, scooping me up and holding me tight and making me feel ... wonderful. In Pamela Larsen's arms, I felt something I never felt in my own mother's awkward embraces. I felt adored.

It was those images that sent me back to the bathroom, over and over, until I gave up on going back to bed and just huddled on the floor, the cool tile against my cheek. Lying there, I tried to force the two images together--my birth parents and the flayed corpses. I tried to imagine them in that grove, as if the image would freeze and shatter those warm memories. But no matter how hard I tried, my brain refused to insert the Larsens into that scene.

When dawn's light finally flooded through the glazed window, the nightmare dreams fluttered away and instead I saw that newspaper headline: "A Mother's Desperate Jailhouse Plea." I saw that and I knew I had to see her.

No, I had to face her.

She'd helped my father murder eight young men and women. My bra

in knew it. My gut refused to agree.