Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller Read online

  Peripheral Vision

  by Timothy Hammer and Courtney Zito

  Electronic Edition

  Copyright © 2017 Timothy Hammer & Courtney Zito

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book, and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  *Film adaptation available.

  Dedication

  To our spouses, for their unconditional love and support

  of our dreams.

  To our children, for being a reason to fight

  for those dreams.

  Chapter 1

  The Bayard House

  1965

  Elizabeth was helping her mother, Grace, with the evening dishes. Grace was smiling. She was happy to have her Lizzy back home. It had been over four years since her eldest child of three had stood in her kitchen, let alone slept under her and Eli’s roof. But Elizabeth's time at the State College had finished, and with it, came a teaching opportunity in her old town. So once again, Elizabeth found herself back in Homewood and the white farmhouse by the twisting river.

  Jason, the youngest of the three children by ten minutes, was seated at the kitchen table. His twin sister, Michelle, was currently out of town on an extended school trip, although secretly, Jason knew that she was actually at another rally. This one in Omaha. Michelle’s stance didn't sit well with their veteran father, or with the many pro-LBJ residents of Homewood, Nebraska.

  Jason was glad he wasn’t quite old enough to worry about standing on Whitehall Street and putting a cigarette lighter to his draft card. He had one more year for that. Unlike his sister, Jason tried not to think about Vietnam. Tried not to think about his buddies from last year’s senior class that were finishing basic training at Fort Blinn, and soon would be on their way there. Instead, he thought about baseball, and his grades- which weren’t very good.

  Although the opposition group that Michelle rallied with was small, they made a lot of noise, traveling from town to town and organizing peace rallies around the state. But unfortunately, sometimes when noise gets too loud, it leads to someone trying to make it stop. That someone came knocking on the screen door of the Bayard’s kitchen on that cool October night.

  Jason stared hard at the page of his book, slowly rereading over his latest Algebra assignment, but mostly trying to tune out his father, who was going off once again on one of his many life lectures.

  “...and these choices can affect the rest of your life, Jason. Jason? Are you listening?” Eli Bayard asked.

  He could see that his son wasn’t, but it was just one of those things that you ask anyway.

  “Yeah, Dad. I'm listening. I just need to finish these problems.”

  “Well, this is more important than-” Eli didn’t finish as a loud knock on the screen door startled him.

  Eli, still trying to regather his thoughts, walked over to the kitchen door and looked out. Standing on the other side of the screen door was a lanky, clean cut boy of maybe fifteen or sixteen. Yes, ‘boy’ is the right word, Eli thought.

  A lean baby face, with the first signs of acne, was stared back at him. The boy looked nervous. No, that wasn't it. He looked almost frightened, and he was sweating. Sweating uncontrollably. In the crisp Autumn air, steam seemed to be rising off the boy's skin. It created a grey-like halo above his head. That's when Eli's eyes moved down from the boy's face, to his hands. And that’s when he saw the gun- an M1923. Just like mine from the war, Eli thought.

  “Mr. Bayard, sir? Is your daughter home?” The boy asked. Eli started to shake his head and slowly put his hands up all at the same time. “Michelle. Is Michelle home?”

  “Son, now...you need to just-”

  But that's when the gunshot rang out and took Eli's words away. The bullet passed clean through his abdomen and shattered the blue flower vase that rested on the kitchen table. The same blue vase that had been the centerpiece for so many family breakfasts with eggs, and bacon, and pancakes. Grace screamed. The screen door flew open and Eli stumbled backwards and crumpled to the kitchen floor.

  “You tell her to shut her lying, little bitch mouth,” the boy yelled. “You hear me? You tell her… no more, NO MORE!'”

  With that, the lanky gunman pointed the barrel of the pistol at Eli's head, and went to pull the trigger. But before he could deal the kill shot, his eyes betrayed him, and strayed over in the direction of Elizabeth. Their eyes met, and for a brief moment, he let a breath of new air slip through his cracked lips and refill his thirsty lungs. Something's wrong with her eyes, he thought, and then there was a loud cracking sound, and he fell to the ground.

  The wooden baseball bat had made contact with the side of the lanky gunman's head, and he fell just like Jason knew the long-necked bitch would. The cracking sound made Jason long for the dirt of the baseball diamond, but alas, it would be another five drawn-out months before he suited up again for the Homewood Eagles. Jason looked for the gun, but in the fall it had slid across the kitchen floor and stopped at the feet of Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth just stared at the gun for a moment, thinking of the cold barrel, and wondering if the grip was still warm. And then she bent down and picked it up. It was still warm, and it felt heavy in her hands, but she thought she could handle it, if she had to. She had to. Elizabeth pointed the pistol at the skinny teenager who was now sprawled out on her mother's kitchen floor, bleeding from the side of his head. She looked up at Jason, who seemed to be lost in thought as well, and then the screaming began again. Mother? She thought.

  Grace had waited for Lizzy to pick up the gun, and then she dropped to her knees next to her fallen husband. The wound didn't look that bad really. Just a small hole, and a few drops of blood on his shirt. Then she noticed the crimson pool that was quickly growing beneath Eli.

  “Oh God, please, no!” Grace cried. Panic was setting in now and it gripped her. She began to scream hysterically.

  Elizabeth, still pointing the gun at the bleeding boy, made her way to the kitchen phone, and dialed the operator. When she spoke, she almost didn’t recognize her own voice. It was oddly calm, given the present situation. They will be here soon, and Daddy will be alright, she thought as she finished talking to the operator. She hung up the phone and went to her father.

  “Daddy?” Tears were now running down Elizabeth's cheeks. At the sound of her voice, Eli's eyes opened and looked up at his daughter's face.

  “Lizzy...it's okay. I'm fine. I'm fine… ” With that, all the color left his face, and his eyes locked on his daughter's. “It's okay.” He whispered. Those were his last words. Another Bayard man had died before his 49th birthday. Eli James Bayard was only 48 years old.

  Elizabeth's tears suddenly stopped. She exhaled and looked towards the kitchen door. The lanky gunman
was starting to move. Her brother was no longer standing over the teenager, but kneeling next to Grace by her father's side. By his dead side. The thought awakened a deep anger inside of her, and a new horrible pain stirred in her belly. Her whole body began to shake with feelings of shock and rage, but somehow, she still tightened her grip on the handgun. Her wobbly legs carried her towards the teenager who was now almost to his feet. He was dazed and bleeding, but saw her coming and took a step backwards. Before he could move another step, Elizabeth was upon him. Her left hand wrapped itself around his neck, her fingernails digging into his fleshy skin. Her right hand brought the warm handled gun up to the boy's head and pressed the barrel to his sweaty forehead. Their eyes met for the second time.

  “It's okay,” she said.

  Lizzy noticed the boy's pupils grow large, like black marbles, and then she pulled the trigger. The reaction was both sudden and exciting. The back of the boy's head exploded all over Grace's pretty butterfly wallpaper, and the reverb onto Elizabeth's face. The body of their evening visitor fell once again to the floor.

  She could feel the warm blood on her face. It was dripping now, running off her nose and onto her blouse. Emotions were pulling her into a myriad of directions, but she knew that she mustn’t turn around. She mustn’t let her family see her like this. Not with all this blood, all this blood, and... this smile. I'm smiling, she thought.

  Elizabeth stepped out of the front door and into the cool October night air. The steam was now rising off her warm body, and she could see her breath. The grey mist surrounded her, blurring her outline at the edges. She made her way down the gravel driveway, past the barn, the chicken coop, the machine shed; and continued down towards the river. It was all she could think of. She couldn't let them see all this blood. She needed to wash it off, and wash it away. Send it down the river away from her happy family, away from her… and send this damn smile with it.

  The thought of her smiling brought her shaking hand up to her face, almost trying to wipe the smile away. But instead of wiping off her smile, Elizabeth accidentally wiped the blood across her lips and into her open mouth. Without thinking, she swallowed. Like the gunshot just moments before, the reaction was both sudden and exciting. She felt a surge of energy run through her body. It was overwhelming. She dropped to her knees next to the riverbank. Her back arched and her legs and stomach began to spasm involuntarily. She shook all over and then let out a low moan. The feeling was like nothing she'd ever experienced before, and it seemed to clear her mind. She got to her feet, pushed her way through the tall grass that grew up next to the river and waded out into the water. She didn't go far, it wasn't needed. Her hands worked fast as she washed herself clean. Elizabeth then sat down in the river, leaned her head back and let the water run through her hair and over her face- taking away the blood as it went. She was starting to feel okay again. It was all going to be okay. That's when the sound of sirens split through the still silence of the valley and flashing lights lit the way down to the river.

  Chapter 2

  Signal Hill

  1983

  “Are there horses there, Mommy?” Asked the little girl with long, espresso colored hair, from the back seat of her father's light blue 1978 Chevy Nova.

  Five-year-old Sarah had never ridden a horse. In fact, she had never even seen one before, other than on their television, or in the colorful pictures of her favorite storybook. It was a bedtime story she begged her mommy to read to her every single night before she fell asleep. It was Sarah’s favorite, because her beautiful mother would sit next to her on the bed, smiling, and make all of the animal noises. She was really good at it.

  Growing up between the pavement of sidewalks and interestingly named streets of the big city, didn't provide ample opportunities when it came to horse sightings- especially when one’s parents were both constantly working. But things tend to be different in the country, and a trip away from the city lights was just what the doctor had ordered for the little family of three.

  Her mother smiled and flipped on the radio. She tuned through the static as she described Aunt Elizabeth's two horses to her wide-eyed daughter. At last, her hand arrived at an audible song, something older, much older sounding. The crackle and pops of the record’s grooves underscored the slow piano riffs of the 1920’s Faz Williams tune that floated out from the car’s speakers.

  The music seemed to grow louder as her mother’s blue eyes glimmered in the sunlight that beamed through the front windshield… and then the world flickered, like a film running off its track. Everything slowed down. Everything but the screech, the scream, and the bang. Then it was all grey.

  ●

  As a child, Sarah had always felt different. It wasn't just one thing that she could put her finger on, but rather a general feeling that engulfed her whole being at times. An “extra sensitive” was how she would eventually come to think of herself, but as a little girl, she just thought of it as the feeling. It was strange, but sometimes, she would dream about events before they happened. Like the time Tommy Moore- he lived just three houses down- broke his arm on the monkey bars at Holly Glen Park. Sarah had dreamt about it the night before, but she didn’t realize it at the time. That was because back then, her dreams weren’t linear, they were just snapshots, really. All she saw in her dream, was a piece of rusty metal, a small hand and she heard a child crying. She didn’t know it was Tommy, nor did she realize it was on the playground.

  Of course, after it happened, it made perfect sense. The monkey bars at the playground were old and rusty. As Tommy swung from one bar to another, he cut his hand on the rusty bar, which caused him to reflexively let go mid-air and sent him plummeting to the ground. He laid on the ground sobbing, his arm twisted beneath him in an unnatural position. It turned out to be a compound fracture that required hours of surgery to fix the nerve damage, and Sarah could’ve stopped it. Or could she? She carried guilt about that incident for months after.

  Other times, Sarah would have waking dreams and visions. During some of these occurrences, there was usually a familiar, tingly presence of déjà vu, like she'd seen or heard something before, and then nothing more. But there were moments, like the car accident, where there was just no mistaking the feeling. It always came from the pit of her very being, and it always preceded something awful.

  After the car accident, it only got worse. The dreams became more defined, and more lucid. And in waking, she would be struck with immobilizing feelings of shame and depression. The residual effects of seeing, but not being able to change anything, lead her foster mother to get little Sarah in to see a child psychiatrist, Dr. Brown.

  Dr. Brown was a very tall man, especially to little Sarah. He seemed God-like to the little girl, with his booming voice, vast knowledge and stature. When he spoke, they listened. It was Dr. Brown, that got little Sarah started on the pills. That was twenty-five years ago.

  “What's in a dream?” Dr. Brown had asked her as a child.

  Sarah wondered that as well. He had explained to her, that at times throughout history, dreams had been known to provide guidance or even outright answers. But what if there were more questions than answers? And why did some tend to recur and others fade to grey, even before her feet hit the cold floor in the morning? Sarah didn’t know, her young mind couldn’t process what was happening to her. And as an adult, some twenty-five years later, she was starting to believe that she never would.

  Gate 17

  Sarah’s eyes suddenly flicked open. It took a minute or two for the focus to adjust to its new settings. Her surroundings slowly defined themselves, and an outline began to take shape. It's the feeling again, Sarah thought. I know this place. The dark outlines of the shapes around her soon filled in on themselves and rendered her new location. She looked down at her bare feet, they were small again, just like when she was a little girl. Her small toes were covered with dirt. Just above her ankles was the hem of her blue nightgown. It was always the blue nightgown for some reason.

>   Sarah shivered as a cool breeze moved across her skin. She was standing on an old gravel driveway, surrounded on both sides by a row of aging cedar trees, and leading up a small hill to a small white house with a porch swing. The smell of cedar reminded her of Christmas morning. Her father, who had always tried to be different than the neighbors, was a cedar tree man, and not a pine man.

  The sun had already set, but the lone streetlamp at the end of the gravel driveway, was enough to show Sarah the way. The edges of this world were somewhat blurred. If she tried to look past the row of cedars on her left, or past the streetlamp behind her, the images just seemed to fade and distort into grey until she was forced to look away, for fear she'd go crazy. Boundaries. She thought, as she began to carefully walk up the driveway. She stepped softly, to avoid hurting her bare feet on the pointed rocks that were scattered in with the smaller gravel. As she reached closer to the top of the hill, the driveway curved slightly to the right and ended near a dilapidated garage structure that leaned to the left. Sarah's attention, however, was more focused towards the front porch of the house, and the porch swing.

  “Yes,” she spoke out loud, “I've been here before.”

  She shivered again at the sound of her voice. The voice of a child. And then the music started in. Somewhere inside the house was an old piano, and now that piano welcomed Sarah to the porch. The song was familiar, but a name is a difficult thing at times. She looked back down the driveway. The streetlamp now seemed miles away, and the trees seemed to reach up into the night with no end, no top. A creak came from the porch swing, and her eyes followed. The wooden swing was suspended from the porch ceiling by two rusted chains. It had started to sway in the light breeze, and the chains were now squeaking as it moved back and forth. Maybe it wasn't the breeze after all. As Sarah's small feet carried her towards the swing, she realized that it wasn't empty anymore. Now seated on the swing and intermittently pushing off the wooden porch floor with her feet, was a beautiful young woman, with shoulder length, dark brown hair. She faced out towards the driveway and seemed not to notice Sarah.