Shattered: A Psychic Visions Novel (17 page)

“No, it’s not. It’s not what you think. You need to run. Dear God, please Hannah, run…”

Hannah froze when the woman called her name. “You know who I am?”

“Of course I do. Run. Please. Don’t talk to me, or they will find you.” She spun Hannah around, gave her a push and screamed, “Run!”

*

Trevor woke to
a heavy sensation on his chest. He shifted but it wouldn’t ease. Struggling for air, he bolted upright and hands to his chest he raced to the small balcony in search of fresh air.

What the hell…

He gulped and gulped, but nothing eased the constriction. If he didn’t know better he’d have thought he was having a heart attack of some kind, but there was no pain, nothing but the awful inability to catch his breath. The early morning air was dark, dank. Dare he say fetid? That made no sense. There were huge flower gardens behind Maddy’s Floor. Then he understood.

He wasn’t in the physical world, he had crossed into the gray space between.

Although a regular graywalker, he hadn’t been here in several weeks.

He closed his eyes, his fingers gripping the rail hard. He needed the reminder when he was here that the physical world existed, but he wasn’t in it. He was but it was a different dimension that no one but those unfortunate or fortunate, depending on their experience, understand. He knew several who did. They rarely spoke about the experience together, but when one had a problem they all came to offer advice. It was the weirdest thing in that the only person he knew who could access the same gray space as he could was Stefan. The others would be in their own version. As if there were multiple levels or dimensions of a personalized grayscale for each of them.

He opened his eyes, hoping to be in the physical world, but he was still in the half lit space. That meant he
needed
to be here. He worked through the possible reasons, sensing when his chest eased or constricted the closer to the right subject.

When he considered Hannah his chest squeezed in pain. He grunted and tried to focus on his breathing. He turned slowly to see how she slept and found her stretched out on the tip of the bed fully dressed, her hair wet as if she’d showered and lay back on the bed and fallen asleep.

Only she wasn’t in her body.

Damn it. He should have heard her. Normally he was a light sleeper, even for astral walkers. How did she get past him? And where had she gone? He went to step back into the room and his ribs crushed in deeper again. He groaned and hunched over. As he swiveled toward the railing, the pressure immediately eased. He straightened trying to regain his breath. And his gaze caught sight of Hannah out in the grassy lawn below. She had her arms open and he heard her call out.

“Why?” She shook her head adding in a plaintive scared voice, “Please tell me.”

He searched the grayness looking to see who she spoke too.

But he could see no one.

Then heard a hair raising scream. But it wasn’t Hannah. She froze, he raced forward as if being chased, only to slam to a stop as if hitting a solid blank wall. He watched in disbelief as part of her body, energy, soul – call it what it was – and Stefan would likely call it an ethereal body – shattered.

Literally her head
shattered
outward into a zillion little pieces. In slow motion all the pieces floated to the ground. Scattered on the grass.

His throat seized in panic.

What the hell?

He wanted to race down to the lawn. He wanted to run to her aid. But he couldn’t move. His feet had fused to the floor. He wasn’t allowed to go. Although he understood why he couldn’t, he also railed at it. He was in the grayscale. The half world. So was she. But he wasn’t in the same grayscale.

He was
viewing
from a privileged position as a guest in
her
grayscale world.

He watched in disbelief as the impossible happened. The tiny particles of her head slowly pulled back together again, and like a slow playing movie now playing in reverse, the pieces reformed her head into the same shape as before.

He gasped then groaned. Jesus.

Talk about a headache.

Once again, she turned, her face emotionless, and she walked back toward the hospital and disappeared from his sight.

As she disappeared, the mechanism holding him in place released.

He bolted back in the bedroom and into the hallway. When he walked in grayscale the experience exhausted him. She somehow had to be better adapted to do what she’d just done. And what toll did it take on her?

The elevator was empty, waiting to be called. He took the stairs two steps at a time. When he burst through the doors on the main floor, he checked the elevator but it was still standing on Maddy’s Floor waiting for a call to bring it down to the main floor. Not wasting another moment, he ran to the back patio. And came to a shuddering stop.

Hannah sat still as a mouse, seated on the furthest table, but her head, Jesus. It moved and shifted like the pieces were alive.

He screamed,
Stefan!

*

Stefan bolted awake,
already on the floor and racing across his bedroom before he understood who’d called.

It’s Hannah. I don’t know if you can see this, but it can’t be fucking possible.

Stefan dropped to the floor in a cross legged position and jumped free. He locked on Hannah and Trevor’s position and willed himself there. He opened his eyes to see himself on the back patio standing beside an empty table.

But no sign of Trevor or Hannah.

“Trevor, where are you?” he snapped. They had to be here somewhere. His tracker could be off a little, but not like this.

“Grayscale,” came the terrified whisper.

Shit, that place was tough for anyone, but if Trevor was in there, there was a reason, and it was never a good one. It always meant someone was in need of assistance. Stefan shifted realities, wondering at the ease he could do so. There was a large door in front of him. He knocked lightly.

“Come in,” Trevor said. “And fast.”

Stefan walked into Trevor’s landscape and froze.

“What the hell…” he whispered in fascination.

“Yeah, like what the hell.”

Hannah sat frozen, in a grayscale, but the rest couldn’t be possible. To start with, her head – not her face – but the rest of her head – appeared to be moving, shifting, as tiny pieces sought to find their proper place.

“Tell me what happened, right now,” Stefan demanded in a low tone, not wanting anything to disturb the process in front of him.

“I just woke up to feeling like I was having a heart attack, raced outside and saw her talking with someone but couldn’t see to whom. Then as if she were frozen in place, her head exploded. I was afraid someone took a shotgun to her head. Next thing I knew the pieces of her essence started to fly around as if putting Humpty Dumpty back together again – literally. By the time I got here, it was as if some fine tuning was taking place.”

They stared as the pieces slowed their movements and Hannah did a full body wiggle as everything settled into place. As if to accent the new state, Hannah gave a big sigh and her body relaxed.

“It’s done, whatever that was.”

“It was a full realignment,” Stefan said in an awed voice.

“If that’s special, I’m sorry Maddy didn’t see it,” Trevor said.

“I did. I just don’t quite believe it,” Dr. Maddy said in a soft voice from inside Stefan’s aura. It was always special to have her visit in this way. Grayscale was weird in that you didn’t actually see what you thought you saw and all movement acted differently. He hadn’t heard her arrive. But he’d sensed her.

“Maddy? You can walk in grayscale?” Trevor asked in surprise.

“Technically I’m not. I’m using Stefan to port in and out. I can’t walk in here or do anything but observe. Still, what I just saw…”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Stefan said, his vocal tone so damn close to Maddy’s now that he wasn’t sure if she was her own grayscale entity here or if she was using his ethereal image to communicate. Things got especially confusing when two powerful energy workers came together.

He glanced at Trevor. As a graywalker in his own world, Trevor had just experienced a view into someone else’s world but with an inability to help. As they watched, she slowly got up from her chair and reappeared long moments later as she made her way back to her bed. In her room and looking as normal as anyone could after what she’d been through in greyscale, she relaxed into her body and slept. The pieces of her head slowly sank into position – but were they in the right positions?

Trevor, his voice barely audible, asked, “Can we do anything for her?”

“That depends.” Stefan said. “Maddy, your take?”

“It depends on what reality those pieces put her head back together as…”

*

Now that was
more like it. She was splintering once again. A weird and wonderful process he’d seen time and time again. He’d done his best to bring it to fruition, but instead it happened without any push from him.

Although when it happened it always triggered alarms. Sometimes he managed to get there in time to see it. But he wished he knew what caused it – so he could make it happen. But so far he’d failed at every attempt. Was it fear on her part? He’d tried to scare her into doing this, but with no success. He wanted it to happen when he called, when he was close enough to see it in person, not this window into her world, that let him see only from a distance. Then he was accessing that window through the blocks in her head. Not a direct link that might have allowed him to do more.

That bothered him. He’d love to be able to cause something like that at his will. Imagine being in a business meeting, or how about an international summit and have all the world leaders disintegrate in front of him. He’d rule the world if he could. He could do something so very similar now, but he had to be too close, have a history with the victim to make it last. He was getting stronger, so much so but not to the extent of controlling on a global basis. But he entertained the thought fondly. He had money enough for his needs at this point but could always use more. And then there was the power issue – no one ever had enough of that.

Still, he couldn’t spend all his day on his games. He needed information. Now. This man, this Trevor, was pissing in his backyard. No one did that. Who would have thought the past could return like that? Hannah married? And to this man?

But he refused to let it upset him. This was a challenge. And those kept him on his toes and put a smile on his face.

It couldn’t be allowed to continue of course but in the short term, hey, it kept boredom away.

He couldn’t wait until the information came in. Just what had his old friend been up to?