Amber by Dan-Dwayne Spencer (e book reader .TXT) 📕

a hospital gown. She struggled against some unseen opponent. Something nondescript. It held her tight, preventing her escape. Terror filled her wide eyes as she helplessly tried to flee. She called out to me, but I didn’t understand. It sounded like it could have been Spanish. What I understood were her groans and screams. Waving my hand, I tried to clear the fog away, but its white denseness magnified, engulfing me. It could have been her shadow the girl struggled with, or the shadow of another person, or something so horrible my mind couldn’t begin to understand it.

Flower’s gentle touch dispelled the vision and in an instant, I returned to the grassy meadow.

“You saw something,” she demanded.

No way I could entrust the details of what was happening to me to this stranger, no matter how comfortable she made me feel. If she heard me describing the weird images appearing before me, she would call the local funny farm and have me committed.

Instead of talking civilly, I screamed, “Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. I didn’t see anything.”

“You saw something—a vision. Please tell me what you saw. I know you have a gift. You have the eyes.”

The words, hell, shit, and damn all converged in my mind. She used the term gift—the same term I heard my mother use in my dream.

“We are desperate. If you saw a vision, you must tell me.”

“Stop it, I don’t have to do shit.” My bellowing drew attention.

Several hippies gathered around me. One guy with his long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, and looking like an old college professor, helped me to my feet.

Flower put her hands over my temples. Warmth flooded over me, through me. My hesitation and fear melted away. Her touch wasn’t stimulating but peaceful and serene. She removed them and stepped away from me.

“He’s alright. He….” She stopped short of saying what had caused my sudden weakness.

I whispered, “We need to talk.” Being only fifteen, there were lots of things yet undiscovered in my world, but one thing I knew, she did something to me—something unnatural. Perhaps a better word was supernatural, like my dreams and visions. Without a doubt, Flower had something my mother would call a gift. This changed everything.

She whispered, “You should feel better right away.”

Looking past the small crowd of hippies gathering around me, I saw my friends hurrying to my aid.

I whispered to Flower, “Alone, we need to talk alone. I want to talk about what just happened and—”

Flower interrupted me, “I understand. You’re not ready for others to know.”

Nodding my answer, I straightened my legs—they were strong again. The dizzy spell had passed, and it felt good to not only stand but stretch. With my arms over my head, I reached for the sky. I felt fine, no, better than fine. Whatever stunt she pulled did the trick better than a dozen cups of Stoney’s ginger tea could possibly do.

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asked, after running a record-breaking sprint and hurdling past Roger to get to me.

Roger’s shoes slid in the dirt, leaving plowed furrows and a brown cloud in his wake. “What did they do to you?” He was in fine form, mouthy and outspoken as ever.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I assured them.

The crowd began to dissipate.

The gray-headed man told a gray-headed woman, “I thought another one had come down with it.”

“Thank God, he isn’t one of them,” the gray-headed woman replied.

“This has to end,” Stoney said. “It has everyone on edge.”

Then they stepped out of earshot. Only Roger, Rose, Jimmy, and Flower remained.

Scratching my head, I turned to Flower and asked, “What are they talking about? What has to end?”

It was Rose who answered, “Arland, you have to see this to believe it.”

She motioned for me to follow her to the Roundhouse.

Upon arriving there, I expected something awesome or even terrible, but the tent contained several filing cabinets and about twenty-five folding chairs around a series of long tables on a dirt floor. “I don’t get it. Nothing special here.”

Flower explained, “You must climb the stairs to the western treehouse.” She led the way up a staircase spiraling around a tree trunk. The construction appeared professional. Suspended by huge branches and log stilts, the design reminded me of a beach house as much as a treehouse. The upper floor contained a modern finished-out room. Inside, an assortment of high-tech medical equipment surrounded four occupied hospital beds. With wide eyes, I looked to Jimmy, to Roger, and back again as the equipment beeped and droned, making soft gushing noises. An older hippie chick, maybe ten years older than Flower, was going from bed to bed checking IVs and monitoring the machines. She looked startled seeing us come in.

“It’s okay, Teresa. They’re friends,” Flower said. The medical attendant turned back to her busy task of looking after the specialized machinery.

“This is our clinic,” Flower said. “It’s small, but up to now it sufficed.” The four patients lay unconscious; one of them looked like the young raven-haired beauty I saw in my vision. Her hair framed her face in cascading curls as she lay still, eyes closed and silent.

“Are they sleeping?” I asked, knowing the answer beforehand.

“No. They are all in comas,” explained Flower.

I should have been surprised to see a clinic in a treehouse, but by that time nothing could compare with what I’d already experienced. My mind still reeled from how Flower’s touch had rocked my world. I asked, “You guys have a doctor who makes rounds to the commune?”

“No.” Flower folded her arms and looked toward the patients in the beds, “We have no doctor. I’m a nurse and Teresa here is my aid.” She went to a monitor and checked the readings before turning back toward us. “And—I’m sure Arland has guessed—I’m a healer. He