Chasing Amanda (2 page)

Molly waved, “Pastor Lett!”

Pastor Lett’s head turned toward Molly. She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, hunched her shoulders and lifted her chin in curt acknowledgment, quickly retreating into the church.

Molly disregarded the slight brush-off, thinking that perhaps she was just in a hurry, distracted. She jogged out of the parking lot toward White Ground Road, a three-mile stretch of secluded rustic road that wound through the historic section of Boyds, Molly’s typical morning run.

She ran at a strong and fast pace for the first half mile, pushing the worried thoughts of Erik and his latest female conflict to the back of her mind and focusing on the sting of the crisp fall air as her lungs expanded with each breath, until the familiar rhythm of her feet pounding the earth lulled her into an easier pace, and she found her groove.

Every morning, her own body surprised her. At forty-two, she was still able to run several miles without issue, but the fact that she could run was not what surprised her the most, it was her desire to run—almost an insatiable need—and the confidence she felt as she ran. Her therapist had wondered, maybe rightfully so, if running was symbolic of Molly running away from her past. Molly had never quite been able to shake the similarity. Before Amanda, Molly had run to stay in shape. After Amanda, running had centered her mind. With the absence of the responsibilities of work, Molly had still been plagued by thoughts of Amanda. She craved the escape that running provided—the escape from her own thoughts.

No sight was more beautiful than the graceful branches of the tall oaks that lined the rural road. She knew every rut and pot hole, the areas that deer favored as their highways, and even where the sun shone through the brightest, up around the bend near Hannah Slate’s farm. She anticipated the shift in her footing as the paved road ended, fading gently into dirt and gravel, and felt her body relax as she inhaled the smell of the bright fall day.

At first, the change in temperature seemed imagined. Molly’s eyebrows furrowed. She sped up her pace and her heartbeat followed. Within seconds, the air around her became cold. Goose bumps rose on her arms and sent a chill down her spine. She swallowed hard. Her calm slipped away, overshadowed by dread and certainty of what was yet to come.

A cold sweat replaced the perspiration she had earned. She swiped at her brow with a shaking hand. Her shorts and tank top clung to her small muscular body. An eerie silence took shelter in her eardrums as her vision dimmed, and an acidic taste settled in her mouth. Each breath became a fight for air. Her feet stopped moving.
No! Not now!
She closed her eyes and tried to will away the pressure in her head. There was no escape. She clenched her fists and brought them to her forehead, bracing herself for what she knew was happening. A fog enveloped her mind, and her legs became weak beneath her. A passerby, seeing her body shake and thrust, would have thought Molly was having a seizure. A passerby wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between a seizure and the Knowing. Molly could.

She cursed herself for allowing the Knowing
to continue to control her, year after year, yet she had no power to stop it. She felt like a puppet on a string. Visions flashed in her mind:
A cavern-like room surrounded by shadowy darkness; a young girl huddled in a corner, scared and shivering; the smell of rancid, wet earth.

Molly fell to the ground and cried out in fear and frustration, “No!” She lay there, amidst the dirt and gravel, too spent to move, her mind in turmoil. A war raged within her—a battle of fear and denial—fear for what the Knowing had shown her and her own denial to believe it. She held onto reality by a thin thread, her trachea refused to open, to breathe. She stood on shaking legs and staggered, grasping at her neck and trying desperately to take air into her lungs. She spun around, looking for anyone, anything that might help her. She finally gasped a breath, a tortured inhalation. Molly pushed on, trying to make it out of the secluded area, to the clearing around the corner. Her mind saw flashes of the little girl and instantly replaced the images with one she knew—Amanda. Tears ran down her cheeks, and a familiar weight bore into her gut.

Breathe, breathe, breathe
. She stumbled forward.
It’s not my fault,
echoed in her head. The visions were now part of her. Molly scanned the edges of the forest; the mass of tangled branches and fallen trees were thick, the underbrush unforgiving. She couldn’t maintain her focus. Her mind was too foggy, her body too weak. Nothing made any sense.

She limped up the road in a stumbling jog. As she neared the bend of the road where White Ground ran into Old Bucklodge Lane, she found her footing, pushing forward, faster, trying to make it to Hannah’s before the Knowing disabled her once again.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she ran faster than ever before. She ran up the hill and sprinted the last half mile to the old red farmhouse where Hannah lived. As if she had passed into another universe, the air lightened, birds chirped, horses gamboled in the pasture. Normalcy abounded. Hannah was outside with one of her many hunting dogs, a small beagle with floppy brown ears and a little tuft of brown fur in the center of its white and black body.

“Hey, Molly!” Hannah hollered, waving.

Molly grabbed her left side, kneading a stitch, her renewed energy left her as quickly as it had come. She lifted her arm in a limp wave and lowered herself to the grass of Hannah’s yard, her mind in a bubble of disbelief.

Hannah came running over, “Molly, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She crouched next to Molly, reaching for her hand. “Molly?”

The feel of Hannah’s large calloused hand, hardened from years of farm work, brought comfort to Molly.

“Molly, what happened?” Hannah’s voice was hurried, concerned.

Molly longed to take refuge in Hannah’s arms, to feel the protection of another human being. How could she tell her that she’d reached beyond the tangible? The secret of the Knowing
was excruciating. Fear and stress locked inside her like a rabid animal in quarantine, yearning for escape. Yet she would not speak of it. Molly had learned years ago that the Knowing was not something most people possessed, much less understood. They feared her ability to see into the lives of others or simply dismissed her visions and defined Molly as crazy or attention-starved. She’d lived with the ill-defined visions, the ability to be shown just enough details to drive her crazy, since she was a little girl. Some saw her visions
as a gift. Molly felt imprisoned by her mind. The psychic ability was as much a part of her as her hazel eyes and the birthmark on her left thigh.

“Hard run,” she managed. In her mind she pleaded for the images to leave her. It was happening again, and she had no way to control it. She silently began her mantra,
I’m okay. It’s not my fault.

“My goodness, Molly,” Hannah said, looking over Molly’s dirty legs and shirt.

“I tripped in a pothole,” Molly lied.

Hannah frowned, her brown hair, absent of the typical streaks of gray seen in other sixty-year-olds, swept her shoulders. Molly crawled to her knees, and Hannah helped lift her to her feet. “Molly, why don’t I take you back home? You can’t run in this condition. Is Cole home?”

“My car is at the church,” Molly said, distracted. “Cole’s at work.” Her body felt awkward, too heavy for her legs to carry.

Hannah guided her to her car and settled her in the passenger’s seat. “I’m headed to the church anyway.”

As Hannah drove, Molly could feel the pressure lift from her chest. Slowly, her mind became her own again. Her first rational thought was that Cole could check her out when he arrived home from work. There were definite advantages to being married to a doctor. Her second was that if she were losing her mind again, she didn’t want Cole to know.

When they turned onto White Ground Road, Molly was surprised to see a mass of cars. “What’s going on?” Molly squinted at the traffic jam. “Is there a funeral today?” The question was in contrast to the attire of the gathered crowd, none of whom were dressed to honor the passing of a loved one.

“Oh, Molly, if only. It’s much worse. I thought you knew,” Hannah’s face grew grim. “Celia and Mark Porter’s daughter, Tracey, went missing late yesterday from the Germantown Adventure Park. The community is gathering for a search party today. It’s awful, poor little thing.”

Comprehension hit Molly hard and brought with it a feeling of dread. Amanda. Panic grew in Molly’s chest, the hope she’d had of the visions being flashbacks was now crushed. The Knowing had wrapped its claws around her mind and now prickled her limbs, commanding her attention. Molly was terrified of going down the rabbit hole again, and equally as frightened not to.

Two

Tracey’s small body trembled. She grimaced as she pulled her knees, scraped and bruised, up to her chest. Her red hair, which was normally so carefully coifed, was thick with dirt and stuck to her forehead and cheeks. She tentatively lifted her hand and pushed the sticky strands away from her face—every careful movement a torturous reminder that she was not alone, magnifying her desperation and bringing more tears, which slipped silently over the newly-torn skin on her cheeks, stinging her face. She squeezed her eyes closed in an attempt to keep from making a sound but could not suppress the memory of the terror-filled night that had led her to the tiny chamber where she now huddled, shivering and scared, on a dirty, torn mattress.

She listened carefully to the slow and steady breathing of her captor, barely visible in the dark chamber. Tracey’s gaze shifted to a lone candle, standing sentinel on a crude table and casting scary shadows of jagged shapes across the room. The smell of the dank dirt floor lingered in the air, making her feel sick to her stomach. She suppressed the urge to gag and concentrated on her surroundings. She saw makeshift wooden shelves stocked with canned food, batteries, and something else that she could not identify. Her eyes settled on a warped piece of plywood resting cockeyed against the dirt wall, blocking her only escape—an escape that Tracey knew would be impossible. Even if she could escape the chamber, she could never find her way through the twisted, narrow passageways that had brought her there. Tracey also knew that at seven years old, she could not outrun an adult.

A chill ran through her like ants crawling along her skin. She shivered and drew her legs in tighter, swallowing the sounds of fear that vied for release as she thought about the person who had lured her there with empty promises and lies. Her eyes spilled tears from the pain in her legs and the fear that consumed her. She shifted her body, making a slight scratching sound against the stale mattress. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her hand flew instinctively to cover her mouth—but it was too late. The terrified sound had already escaped her trembling lips.

Her captor stirred.

Three

Molly desperately wanted to talk to Pastor Lett before leaving to help with the search. She needed to flush out her feelings, to feel safe, and Pastor Lett had always managed to help her wash her mind clean of the demons. Pastor Lett was the only one in Boyds who knew about Amanda, and Molly was thankful to have her to lean on. Now she pushed through the crowd and saw Pastor Lett walking toward the cemetery, glancing backward every few minutes. “Pastor Lett!” Molly called out, noticing that her pace had quickened. She jogged up the hill, “Pastor Lett! Wait, I need to talk—”

Pastor Lett had vanished. A moment later, Molly reached the field and spread the dead stalks with her hands, wondering why in October they were still standing. The fields around Boyds were usually harvested by late September. “Pastor Lett?” she yelled. There was no response. The stalks were still, there was no rustling of husks, no crunching of leaves and stalks under hurried feet—just the noise of the crowd in the meadow below.

The grassy fields of the Adventure Park were spotted with volunteers searching for Tracey. The playground equipment stood unused, unnaturally empty, and eerily quiet. Molly knew she was on dangerous ground and hoped she was strong enough to handle the emotions that swirled within her. She turned her thoughts to Celia Porter, shuddering as she remembered the look on Celia’s face as she had told the crowd of volunteers that it was her fault that her daughter, Tracey, was missing.

“Tracey wanted one more chance to play hide and seek. It’s her favorite game. I found Emma right away. I ran to her and she laughed, and we just sort of ran around for a minute. Then we started looking for Tracey. We found her. She was in the tall grass on the other side of the ship. It’s just that…something was wrong. We found her, but she wasn’t herself.” Celia had wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I should have known. I saw that she was quiet and forlorn, but I just thought that she had seen me laughing with Emma and was jealous or something.”

Perplexed, someone had asked, “But you found her? She didn’t go missing at the park after all? Was she hurt when you found her?”

“No,” Celia had said. “She wasn’t hurt. She was just—”

Mark Porter had interrupted, “She was scared shitless. That’s what she was. Something happened in that tall grass, and we have no idea what it was.”

Molly had seen the guilt consume Celia, had seen her shoulders slump.

“Emma and I both asked her what was wrong. She just gave us this look. So I just thought—”

Mark reached out and held her, and she had continued, “After we found Tracey, I said we had to go. We walked to the car. I was talking to the girls about what we were going to do that evening and about what they wanted to be for Halloween, and Emma’s hair got caught in the clasp of her dress, so I was focused on that for a few minutes.” Her husband had pulled her closer, giving her a look that told of years of support. “When we got to the edge of the parking lot, I reached back for Tracey’s hand, and she wasn’t there. I thought she was still upset about me and Emma. I figured that I had made it worse by just ignoring her sulking.” She looked away. “So I started shouting her name.