First Fruits by Amanda Carney

Author:Amanda Carney
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2015-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

14

Old Memories & New Nightmares

The moment our fingers touched, my mouth parted and I let out a noise of shock. The connection was instantaneous, drawing me in too deep too fast. Suddenly I wasn’t Par anymore—I was Jesse. Touching someone accidentally could sharpen the psychic connection, allowing me to hear their thoughts more clearly, even when I didn’t want to. But touching someone when the link was deliberately open, especially skin to skin, was like becoming that person. Their memories, their feelings—which were in startling detail instead of empty echoes—were my own. Their emotions belonged to me. It was powerful and overwhelming. It was terrifying.

Which was why this was only the second time I’d ever done it. Memories of the first time threatened to rise up but were blessedly snowed under beneath the onslaught of scenes. All I could do was watch.

Images swim before me, crystal clear and animated. I see a young boy with dark hair and sparkling green eyes that I know is Felix, and a younger child, a girl, with similar features and dimples in her smile. It is Nina. They are waiting for their mother’s ginger hardtack candy to set. In a toddler’s voice, Nina asks to be the one to break it this time.

Realizing I’d gone too far into the past, I pulled back with effort. As seductive as the idea of reliving each and every one of Jesse’s memories was, I knew that wasn’t my purpose. I wanted to know who he was, what he’d done, and why he’d done it. I refocused, and what I witnessed would haunt me until the day I died.

A moonlit window. A dark room. A door bursting open and a shadowed figure silhouetted. Then the screams. I watch helplessly as he slaughters my mother and father and my sweet, innocent baby sister, who had just turned fourteen the day before, with his bare hands and teeth. The blood is everywhere. It is bright and glossy and it stands out in stark contrast in the memory. Neon red. I stare at it, confused, the rifle I hadn’t even had a chance to draw up hanging limply in my hand. Felix stands beside me in terrified silence.

In truth, I knew that it’d been so dark in the cabin that the blood had looked black against their white nightgowns, dripping like oil down dangling, lifeless hands. But memories were like that sometimes. Especially the traumatic ones. They became whatever the person wanted them to be, the emotions surrounding the memory distorting the details over time.

This did not, however, make them any less real. And just as Jesse had stood, in shock, with tears streaming down his face as a monster had gorged on the blood of his family, I too felt them streaming down my own face in present day. Horror and heartache tore through me, but I watched on, unwilling to stop until I knew the whole story.

Patrick. This is who I know him to be. I see his face, pale in the moonlight and slick with blood, before my own.

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