Down a Lost Road

Down a Lost Road

By J. Leigh Bralick

Copyright 2011 by J. Leigh Bralick

Smashwords Edition

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author.

For Kathi Russell-Rader, for being such an
inspiration to me.

And for my mom, for always being willing to
listen.

Chapter 1 – Change

All I wanted was my change, but Mr. Dansy
acted like it was a bank heist.

I’d known him as long as I could remember,
and I’d never seen him like this. He had been white as a sheet
since I walked up to the counter, and his hands shook so hard as he
plucked coins from the cash drawer that I was afraid they’d fall
off. Sweat beaded all over his upper lip. I wondered if he was
sick, but his little mole eyes kept darting over the convenience
store like he was looking for someone. When a car backfired he
jumped and spilled all the coins into the bottom of the drawer.
That’s when I really started to worry.

“
Mr. Dansy, are you all
right?”

“
Oh-h-h, fine, Merelin.
Thanks for asking, darlin’.”

He glanced out the window and a visible
shudder ran all the way down him. I followed his gaze, but the
street outside was as deserted as ever, mid-morning at the
beginning of summer. Most of the university students would already
be gone, and they made up at least half the town’s population. I’d
never thought of Mr. Dansy as the paranoid type, but he was really
starting to freak me out.

He suddenly grabbed my hand and dumped the
coins into my palm, pressing my fingers closed over them.

“
Don’t lose it,
darlin’.”

His head made a nervous kind of twitch
toward the door, and his hand shot up to his mouth. Gnawing on a
ragged fingernail, he just stared at me through those round brown
eyes, big as they could possibly get.

“
Have a good day, now,” he
said, fingernail still between his teeth.

Okay. He could have just said, “Get out my
shop,” but at least he was being polite.

“
You too, Mr. Dansy.” I
hesitated near the door. “You’re sure everything’s all
right?”

“
Go, go! Fine. I’m fine.
Take care now, and don’t lose that.”

All right already. I won’t lose all
forty-nine cents.

I nodded and ducked out of the shop. As I
stepped onto the sidewalk, the heat of the early Texas summer
blasted over me, thick with the honey-sweet smell of magnolia
blossoms. The fragrance made everything shimmer, then my stomach
flipped. I stumbled two steps into the shade of the offending tree,
grabbing the dark trunk for support. It was so hot, and that smell,
so sweet, almost sickening. And there, in my other hand, one rough
coin turned so cold it burned.

A terrible sound rose around me, louder and
louder, as if all the noise of the town were being sucked into a
vacuum right over my head. I bent over, covering my ears awkwardly
with my forearms. Louder. Deafening. Then suddenly it was gone. At
almost the same instant it felt like someone grabbed hold of my
stomach and wrenched it straight out. All the blood rushed to my
feet, pulling a shiver of terror behind it. I almost dropped
everything. I could have sworn the whole world shuddered.

I turned – it felt like slow motion – and
glanced back at the shop. Mr. Dansy’s face hovered near the window,
staring out at me. He had his sleeve to his forehead, still
sweating. As I met his gaze he took a half step toward the door. He
didn’t need to speak to warn me away. I lurched, hard, as if
someone had punched me in the back. Clutching the coins, I spun and
propelled myself into motion.

I ran all the way home.

Even my sixteen-year-old sensibilities
couldn’t have cared less about the spectacle I made – grocery sack
swinging wildly, feet hammering the pavement, messy ponytail half
falling out. I’m not ashamed of my running. I’m good at it. But
running track and running in terror are two totally different
things. I wasn’t about to stop to analyze the idea, though.

Head and heart pounding, lungs aching, sweat
everywhere, I finally made it home and jumped the front steps in
two bounds. As soon as the door cracked open I was through it,
throwing my weight back to slam it shut as though something had
chased me home. I even snuck a glance through the peephole to make
sure nothing had.

“
Mer, don’t slam the
door!”

I glared in the direction of the family room
where my older sister Maggie was reading – where she was
still
reading. She hadn’t moved all morning. I couldn’t
imagine trying to explain my terror to her, eighteen and imperious,
too old for such silliness. My fingers tightened on the coins, and
I took three deep breaths to steady myself.

The terror slowly began to fade. Then a
little surge of resentment crept into its place. I couldn’t imagine
Mr. Dansy had ever had a moment’s excitement in his life, so who
gave him the right to freak me out like that? Besides, why was I
always the one who got sent to pick up groceries when the car was
conveniently missing? I was just starting to enjoy my summer break.
Weirdness and overpowering irrational fears were not my idea of a
fun vacation.

The tip of my finger brushed the rough cold
coin again, and the strange feeling stirred in my stomach.

“
Ugh,” I muttered,
shuddering, as I took the groceries to the kitchen. “What’s with
that?”

It came out louder than I meant, but Mom was
right there at the counter and apparently heard my little rant.

“
What’s wrong?”

Why did everyone always have to know my
business? I scrambled to think of a reasonable answer.

“
Maggie. She’s always
yelling at me.” Mom’s brows arched, and I only glowered more.
“Here’s your stuff.”

“
Merelin…”

“
What?” I
snapped.

That made me irked at myself on top of it
all. Why was I being so nasty? I didn’t usually cop that kind of
attitude with my mom.

“
I’m sorry. I’m fine. Just
tired.”

Mom watched me quietly, the way she did when
she knew something was wrong but didn’t want to pry. I tried a
smile and beat a hasty retreat. Another minute and she’d be asking
for her change, but I wasn’t about to hand over the coins. I ran
upstairs to my bedroom and closed the door behind me – gently so
Maggie wouldn’t yell at me again.

My hand still clenched in a fist, damp with
sweat and scored with lines from the coins. I could smell them too,
that cloying metallic scent that made my stomach quaver. My heart
raced, nervous and excited at the same time. Part of my brain – the
part that was growing up way too fast – insisted I was all worked
up for nothing, and being childish besides, but I tuned out. I
smoothed the rumpled green sheet on my old iron-framed bed, sat
down ceremoniously, and tipped the coins out of my hand.

Just then, somewhere in the corner of my
consciousness I thought I heard a door slam, footsteps in the hall.
I jumped and clapped a hand over the coins. But the sound had
gone…if it had ever been there at all.

Great. Now I was hearing things, too.

I turned back to the neat pile of coins in
front of me, and sighed, feeling utterly ridiculous. That was it. A
pile of plain old coins. The quarter, so tarnished you could hardly
see George’s head, two dimes, and four beat up pennies. And I’d run
all the way home in a panic over that? I frowned. No way. I
couldn’t have mistaken the rough, gouged-out face of the one coin,
so burning cold.

Maybe I had dropped it. But I could have
sworn I’d been holding them too tightly. I’m sure I would have
noticed if one had fallen out. At least, if I
had
dropped
it, it would have to be somewhere in the house, because I’d felt it
when I was standing by the door.

I slid off the bed, sweeping the coins into
my hand and dumping them into an old tin on my dresser. A branch
scraped my window with a fingernails-on-chalkboard kind of sound
just as I turned to leave the room. It made me jump, again, and I’m
not usually a jumpy kind of person. I stared a good two minutes at
the window until I’d convinced myself it really was a tree branch,
then I darted out of my room, clattered back down the stairs, and
cleared the last three in one leap.

“
Merry!”

Maggie
and
Tony, this time. They only
called me Merry when they were really mad at me for something. I
poked my head into the family room.

“
What?”

“
Do you
really
have
to sound like a herd of elephants when you come downstairs?” Tony
asked, not even glancing up from his physics textbook. He never
stopped studying.

“
At least I’m not a
barnacle.”

Maggie peered at me over her magazine. “Your
point?”

I shook my head and withdrew. Sometimes it
felt like my twin brother Damian and I were the only sane ones in
the family. I wandered into the kitchen and felt around in the
empty grocery sack. Nothing. Quiet as I tried to be, Mom still
heard me rummaging around and turned to see what I was up to.

“
Looking for
something?”

I shrugged. “Nothing important. I just
picked something up when I was out. A little trinket coin…thing. I
think I misplaced it.”

“
A trinket coin thing? And
you misplaced it?”

“
Um, yeah. Why?”

She studied me closely another moment, then
smiled brightly and turned back to the oven. “I haven’t seen
anything like it, sorry.”

“
You just seemed kind of, I
don’t know, weirded out.”

“
I’m fine.”

I crossed my arms and scowled. Now even my
mom was acting strange.

“
Mom, you don’t get to say
you’re fine. That’s an obnoxious teenager thing,” I said, but she
only laughed. “Just let me know if you see it, okay?”

“
What does it look
like?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it hard. Good
question. “Like…a coin,” I said lamely. “Don’t worry about it.”

Without waiting for her reply I made my
escape. I scoured the foyer once more, opening and closing the
front door and triggering the security beep enough times that
Maggie hollered at me again. Searched up and down the stairs twice,
even the cracks in the carpet where the steps met the wall. No
luck. When I thought I heard a door upstairs squeaking open I
stopped picking at the carpet fuzz and bolted up the stairs.

I ran full into Damian. He only staggered a
step, but I felt the world reel and knew with sickening certainty I
was going to fly head over heels down the stairs. Just before I
plummeted to my doom Damian’s hand locked on my arm, hauling me
upright. He stooped to look at me – he was that tall, and being on
a higher step didn’t help.

“
Whoa, Mer, what’s the
rush?” he asked languidly.

“
Where’d you come from?
Weren’t you supposed to be at the ice rink?”

Damian grinned. “Rink was closed. Zam broke
down, someone left their gear in the locker room, a tornado tore
down the bleachers, you know. It happens.”