Glimpse (2 page)

The officer sighed and pointed back down the alley. “Which way did they go?”

“Left,” I said. “They went left.”

An officer looking over the scene for clues pointed at a broken window facing the alley. “Wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “Looks like those men were trying to break in. I bet the man you helped interrupted them. Thieves aren't big on leaving witnesses.” He jotted down a couple more notes and added, “There's been a string of break-ins around here this past week. I bet it's the same men.”

I shuddered. A couple minutes earlier and it would've been me who interrupted the break-in. I might have been the one getting carted off on a stretcher.

Despite my protests, an officer—the one who had understood my warped sense of humor—insisted on calling my mom. I reddened as he talked to her, going on and on about my “act of bravery,” until he finally handed the phone to me.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Dean?” Her voice was sharp, and I imagined her clutching the cord of her phone as she paced in her office. “Are you okay, Dean?”

“I'm fine. It wasn't that big a deal.”

“Are you hurt? The officer said you stopped some muggers from killing a man.” She sounded skeptical. “Is that true?”

I snorted. Only Mom would entertain the idea that I had hired a police officer to give her a prank call. “It's kinda true. I didn't actually—”

“What were you thinking, Dean!? Putting yourself in harm's way like that. You could've been
killed
.”

“Mom, just—”

Now Mom sounded shrill. “I'm coming down there right now. Just stay where you are and I'll be right there.”

“Mom!” It wasn't often that I raised my voice to my mother, but the situation seemed to call for it. Plus, given what had just happened, I figured she'd forgive me. “I'm fine. Really. It wasn't that big of a deal. You don't need to come down here. Please,
don't
come down here.”

There was a lengthy pause. Mom seemed to be considering her options. “You promise you're okay?”

“I promise.”

“Do you feel well enough to go to school?”

I might not have been the smartest kid on the block, but even I saw the opportunity. Since to-day was Friday, taking the day off would mean I'd get a three-day weekend. I turned my back on the officer and lowered my voice. “Maybe it would be nice not to see everyone today. I need to go home and get changed anyway.”

“Why do you need to get changed?”

“Well, my shirt's ripped and—”

There was a sharp gasp from the other side of the phone and Mom's voice turned shrill again. “Ripped? Did the muggers attack you!?” Her voice reached a pitch that probably had every dog in the block barking.

“Mom, I'm fine. I'm not hurt. It's a small rip. I think I caught it on the fence or something. I'm not bleeding.” I probably shouldn't have said anything, especially since my mom faints so easily. Dad and I always joked that her fainting was the reason the university covered the floor of her office with double-thick plush carpet even though all her colleagues got hardwood. “Okay, Mom,” I said, raising my voice slightly and hoping some of what I said would make it through her hysteria and calm her down. “I'll just go home and get cleaned up. I'm fine. Don't worry. Bye.”

I handed the phone back to the officer. “She, um, she said I should just go home and get cleaned up.”

“I'll have someone drive you.” The officer looked over his shoulder and gestured to one of his colleagues near the perimeter line.

“No, no, you don't need to do that,” I said. We weren't that far from the school and I'd probably be spotted by someone I knew. Then everyone would want to know how I'd managed to hitch a ride with the police. Sure, I wanted to see the inside of a cop car, but not badly enough to deal with that kind of scrutiny. “I'm fine to walk. I only live a few blocks away. Honest, I'll be fine.”

He shrugged, then handed me a card. “If you think of anything else, a better description of the men you saw, or if you remember anything later, give me a call.”

“Sure.” I slipped the card into my jeans pocket and ducked under the police tape.

I started feeling different right then. I don't know if I'd call it a sense of dread necessarily, but it was a general uneasiness that felt all the more urgent because my hands wouldn't stop shaking. At the time, I thought it was just strained nerves.

It wasn't.

***

I took the long way home, hoping a walk would calm me. It did. In fact, the more I thought about what had happened, the calmer I became and the more I started believing that I had actually done something remarkable. I'd stood up to two muggers. Thugs who might've had machine guns and machetes for all I knew. I'd risked my life for a stranger! I
was
a hero.

I grinned as I turned left on Fairfield Drive, stopping at Oakridge Mall. A mob milled around the doors to Gadget Emporium, one of the largest electronics chains in the country. Brightly colored banners announcing the grand opening flapped from flagpoles. An extra large banner was plastered across the red-brick structure, while on the rooftop a giant iPod-holding inflatable gorilla waved in time with the breeze and held a sign that promised “
Free giveaways! Today only!
”

When you're a kid who doesn't get an allowance, the lure of a free giveaway is kind of hard to ignore. Plus, what if the cosmos were rewarding me for risking my life? If so, I wasn't going to argue. And if that reward came in the form of some cool—and free—electronic device, all the better.

Determined, I cinched the straps of my backpack and pushed, ducked, and shimmied my way past one person after the next, buffeted back and forth until I stood at the front, my face inches from the double-wide glass doors.

Displays, advertisements, and colorful boxes covered with blinking lights lined the aisles and dangled from the ceiling. A handful of employees scuttled around, doing some last-minute shelf stocking.

“What time is it?” a woman asked over my shoulder. “It should be open now, shouldn't it?”

“Hey! Stop pushing,” another voice said.

“Ouch!”

“Get off my foot!”

“C'mon already, open the doors.”

The crowd pressed forward as an employee wearing a dark blue smock approached the doors from inside. He smiled, gave an excited wave, and inserted a key into the lock. Then he looked down at his watch and silently mouthed down the final ten seconds.

As soon as the key
clicked
, the crowd surged. But the automatic doors didn't open quickly enough. My shoulder caught the edge as I was shoved through, and I staggered to regain my footing only to get slammed against the floor. I managed to pull myself to the side before I was pulverized to lunchmeat.

Great
, I thought.
I survive a couple muggers only to be killed by a mob of bargain hunters
.

A foot caught me in the ribs. As I started coughing, an arm reached around my chest, heaved me to my feet, and yanked me through the mob, away from the entrance.

“Jeez, kid, whaddaya think you were doing down there?”

“G… getting trampled, m… mostly,” I gasped, rubbing the side of my chest. “Thanks for helping me,” I managed.

“That's what I'm here for,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the crowd. He wore a green Gadget Emporium golf shirt that was ripped and stretched, and he had a few scratches on his arms. I probably wasn't the first person he'd fished out of the mob.

A heavyset woman came barreling out of nowhere, and we both leaped back as she dove into a videogame display next to us. She emerged from the twisted cardboard a moment later with a triumphant scream and a copy of
Bounty Hunter III
clutched in her hands.

“What is wrong with these people?” I wheezed.

“When there's free stuff to be had, people go nuts,” the guy said. “Are you gonna be all right?” He grimaced when I turned to him. “Ouch. You don't look so good.” He gestured to my T-shirt. “Is that your blood? Do you want me to call someone for you?” He pulled out a cell phone from his pocket.

“Blood?” I glanced down at the spatter across my shirt, shivering as I remembered the man in the alley. “I'm fine. It's not my blood.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Really. I'm not too hurt.”

Another wave of shoppers closed in on the display. I dove left and he dove right. I heard a crash but thought it best not to waste time looking back.
So much for the cosmos
. I slid around the outer wall of the store until I ducked through a side exit.

 

I groaned when I saw Mom's silver Volvo parked in the driveway and Dad's Jeep sitting behind it. I guess it was a bit much to expect she would've trusted that I was fine.

I trudged through the door and dropped my bag in the foyer. “I'm home!”

“Dean?” My mom's voice came from the kitchen, but my dad rounded the corner first. As soon as he saw me, his mouth fell open and moved wordlessly. He seemed to be having a tough time speaking.

“A… are you… look at your face,” he finally blurted. I winced. I must've been banged up when I hit the ground face-first.

“Where is my little hero?”
Uh oh
. Mom pushed past my dad and, without missing a beat, screamed. “You said you were fine!” With what seemed like superhuman speed, she was next to me with my face in her hands, turning my head one way, then the next. “You said they didn't hit you, Dean. Your face is all bruised up!”

“Mom, it's not what you think. Let me explain.”

“What's this?” She grabbed my shirt. “Is that—”

“Mom, it's not my blood.”

“B… blood.” The color drained from her face and her eyes rolled back as she slumped over. My dad must've seen it coming because he caught her before her knees buckled and lowered her to the floor. Yup. She was unconscious.

“Are you okay, son?”

I didn't have a chance to answer him. The vision—the first sign of my newly cursed state—couldn't have come at a less opportune time, but I think the universe has a really sick sense of humor sometimes, so of course that's exactly when it did come. My dad had barely finished his sentence when all the color suddenly drained from around me. The foyer walls, my dad's face, his clothing, everything simply muted to shades of gray, as if I had suddenly developed a special strain of colorblindness. I blinked rapidly, expecting the color to return. It didn't. Instead, a woman I was
sure
I'd never seen before appeared to my left.

At first, I thought my parents had company. I glanced at my dad and then back at her. I was about to say “Hello” and apologize for my mom when my sanity got a real kick in the biscuits. The woman seemed confused at first, but then her furrowed brow relaxed and her lips parted slightly, then a bit more. Soon they were curling back farther than lips were supposed to curl back. She dropped one shoulder while the other rose and shuffled forward a step, and then her body twisted more and more until she resembled a crumpled version of the letter S. I cringed at the sight of her, but I practically leaped into the air when she started screaming. Not an excited scream, like the one you might hear at a concert or on a roller coaster. No, this was the kind of scream that freezes blood, sends shivers up your spine, makes you pee your pants, and leaves one word pounding against the inside of your head:
Death
.

I staggered back in horror, caught my foot on my unconscious mother's head, and toppled to the floor. Then, as quickly as the strange woman had appeared, she was gone. The color melted back into the walls. For some reason, I could still hear her shrill scream, and it wasn't until I ran out of breath that I realized I was the one screaming. I scuttled back like a crab until my back hit the wall. “D… dad!” I gasped and pointed to where the woman had been standing. “W… what… w… who was that!”

You should know that my dad's a psychologist. He started his career in mental hospitals for the criminally insane, and when he figured he'd seen it all, he accepted a job at the university. So nothing freaks him out. Seriously. Nothing. I could go out and kill the neighbor's dog, skin it, and wear its head as a hat, and he'd calmly call it a
phase
. Okay, maybe he'd worry a little, but you get the idea. His expression was permanently fixed at cool and collected. But when I looked at him now, his eyes were the size of tombstones and his mouth gaped. Which is how I probably looked when I saw the woman. Except instead of focusing on where the woman had been, Dad's attention was on me.

He blinked twice before he shut his mouth and gave his head a quick shake. “What did you see, son?” He seemed to strain to keep his voice on an even keel.

“Th… that w… woman,” I shouted. “You didn't see her? Y… you didn't h… hear her?”

Dad swallowed. “Did she tell you to do something, Dean?”

“W… what?” I looked from the void where the woman had been standing to my dad. “You didn't hear her screaming? You didn't see how twisted up she was?”

Dad gave an approving nod as if everything suddenly made perfect sense. He brushed his hands down the front of his shirt and straightened his tie, and just like that, his unsettled expression was gone. “Stand up, son.”

I didn't move. I
couldn't
. I stared helplessly at my dad.

He walked over to me and helped me to my feet. My whole body shook. “It's okay, Dean. It's called PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
. I see it all the time in people who live through traumatic incidents: soldiers, people who have survived disasters, and quite often, people who have witnessed attacks.”

“What are you saying? You think I
imagined
that woman?”

He hesitated and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder as a flash of concern played across his face. “Hey, hey, don't worry. It's entirely normal, son. Sometimes PTSD manifests itself as hallucinations, auditory and visual, sometimes just as general anxiety. Don't worry. We can get past this easily.”