The Last Thing I Remember

Author:Andrew Klavan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Angeline

“Angeline!”

A clear, sweet woman’s voice came to me as if through a mist.

“Angeline! Where are you?”

I was lying with my face planted in a thin carpet of damp leaves. I had climbed out of the cave—I don’t know—maybe fifteen minutes before. I was conscious, I guess, if you can call it that, but it was an awfully dim consciousness. Cold, exhausted, hungry—so hungry it was like a high, annoying siren going off in my brain. I couldn’t seem to muster the energy to move anymore. I felt empty, as if I’d been hollowed out, as if there were no more muscle or bone or sinew inside me to give me the strength I needed.

“Angeline, sweetheart!”

I couldn’t tell at first if that voice was real or something in my imagination. It was all mixed up with the other things swirling around in my brain: memories of the karate demonstration and the talk with Beth and the argument with Alex and then the rest: going home to dinner, writing my paper, IM’ing with Josh, and talking on the phone with Rick and then going to bed, my own bed, for the last time . . .

“Angeline! Where’d you go to, you mouse?”

For another few seconds, I lay half-awake and confused. I guess there was a part of me sort of hoping that voice was my mother’s voice. Maybe she was calling my sister, Amy, and soon she’d call me to wake me up for another day at school.

“Wow,” I’d tell her. “I had the weirdest dream . . .”

But then I took a deep breath and lifted my head out of the leaves and looked around me.

I was still in the forest, but it was different here. The trees were farther apart. They were mostly birch trees with peeling white bark. The underbrush was not as dense. There were open spaces covered with leaves. I could hear a brook bubbling happily nearby and birds chirping. The sun was low, but it wasn’t blocked out of sight like it was before. I could see it clearly through the branches, a reddening ball among the clouds.

I turned my head to scan the area—and stopped.

There was a little girl standing there, gazing down at me.

She looked like she was about five years old. A solemn little creature with a pink woolen cap pulled down over her brown hair. She had a pink Windbreaker on and purple leggings marked with patches of dirt. She was holding a small ball in her hand. She was sort of turning the upper half of her body this way and that. She seemed mesmerized by the sight of me.

I stared at her as if she were a vision. I was half-afraid she was. Slowly, I pushed myself up onto my knees. I reached out to her. I wanted to touch her, to make sure she was real.

She just stood there, turning this way and that. She moved her gaze from my face and gazed at my reaching hand. She seemed fascinated by it, hypnotized.

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