Fair Warning by Patrick S. (popular e readers txt) 📕

“If you choose to speak with me, one of us is going to die.”

Those words, spoken matter-of-factly and with the sureness of inevitability, came from a young boy who appeared in front of Scott Lueck’s front porch one evening in September.

Beyond the awning, from soot-stained clouds hanging low over country fields, rain fell and sluiced through the grass with the swift quality of floodwaters. Covering the sky from edge-to-edge, this tempest raged without the thunder or lightning that often accompanied such harried downpours.

Scott, nearly asleep in his rocking chair on the porch, was startled by the interruption in peripheral sound. He had been reading as he always did in the early evenings, and with his book half-closed on his lap, the driving rain served as a relaxing white noise in which to drift off.

When the boy spoke, Scott sat up and scanned the porch, not immediately recognizing the small child standing on the steps. Only after leaning partially off the rickety chair did he finally notice his unexpected visitor: this child, blue of eye and frosted with straw-colored hair, had freckles sprinkled across his pale nose and cheeks, and he stood with the slackjawed posture of a sleepwalker unsure of where to turn next.

His stare, though distracted and seemingly half-alert, flayed Scott’s emotions like a paring knife; he felt haunted, seen, known

in ways he never before experienced. Inexplicable, clenching hands found their way to his heart as he met the boy’s gaze and felt a connection so profound it was as though the child saw into the very fabric of being that made him who he was. Something about the eyes, those deep pools of cerulean brilliance, made the world shrink down to a place so searingly intimate it was unbearable.

It was as though he were looking not at a stranger, but into a terrifyingly dark part of himself. This child could see him, see into

him as clearly as if his skin had crystallized into freshly washed windowpanes.

“Do you choose to speak with me?” the boy asked, his words clearly enunciated even though his lips moved like an aspiring ventriloquist.

Normal voice. Cute face. Nothing to corroborate his constricting chest and uncomfortable nakedness in the boy’s presence.

Then Scott noticed something that had previously eluded him: the boy occupied the bottom step, which was not covered by the porch awning, and yet his grey sweater and blue jeans remained as dry as if he stood under an umbrella. The raindrops hit the boy on his face, shoulders, arms, but were repelled just as quickly, as though to meld with any part of him would initiate a systematic death to every innumerable raindrop in the sky.

Unperturbed by the storm, the boy cocked his head slightly, climbed to the next step.

“Do you choose to speak with me?” he asked again, and took another step. One stair remained before he was on the same level as Scott, feet away with those boring, bottomless eyes.

“I...I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” the boy replied, “but you don’t know why I am here.”

“I’ve never met you before,” Scott said. “How did you get here? Did you come with your parents?”

No cars had driven up his long driveway, not with the gate down as it was. Scott never liked having visitors after five o’clock, rarely tolerated them before.

His house sat within a large moat of trees bordered by farming fields and small ranch houses. The nearest home was half a mile away, and he knew most of the neighbors that lived within a reasonable radius. None of them had children this young, and all of them knew he disliked company.

“Do you choose to speak with me?”

That question again. Aside from the profound uneasiness he felt in the boy’s presence, Scott had the logic to know he should go inside and call the police to get this kid in some kind of shelter where he’d be safe. Strangely, though, he heard himself speaking with words that did not come from coherent commands of his own.

“Yes. I will speak with you.”

Taking that as an invitation, the boy crested the stairs and nodded slowly. “You’ve been given fair warning, Scott Lueck.”

He gaped. “How...how do you know my name?”

“I know many things about you. I know you better than you know yourself. I know about your childhood.”

If any amount of rope still tethered this meeting to ordinary circumstances, it had just been severed.

All his life, Scott suffered from amnesia, although his case was more unique than most: he had no memory of the first twelve years of his life. His first recollections on this planet were of waking up one morning to the smell of bacon and hash browns from a diner across the street somewhere around his thirteenth birthday. Any memory before that point was a blank slate.

He had awoken in the alley beside an orphanage. When he inquired, the officials revealed that no records existed in their database to indicate he lived there. No one knew him, where he came from, or who his family was. He seemed to have flitted in on the breeze and been forgotten just as quickly.

Pills, hypnosis, psychoanalysts, voodoo, no amount of medical or superstitious practices could get his mind to release its well-protected hostages. Now at twenty-eight, Scott had all but given up hope that he would ever know where he came from or why he ended up in a filthy alley beside an orphanage without parents, siblings, relatives--hell, not even a lousy photo in his pocket.

Now this boy, dreadfully close to him and without explanation, brought emotions reeling back to the surface that he struggled for years to keep dormant.

Rain, rain, rain from outside. Faint cars on the highway like distant mosquitoes.

“Who are you?” he asked again, half certain that upon his request the boy would transform into some winged angel or fluorescent deity.

Instead, the boy just spoke: “I am here to show you what is missing. I will show you what you want to know.”

“How could you know what I want? Kid, I’ve never met you before.”

“That is not true, Scott. We have met before. I know you. I know how you live, where you come from, and I know that night after night you dream of a little girl named Krista.”

The book in Scott’s lap dropped to the floor. The girl spoke of, Krista, did indeed appear in his dreams most nights, though she was never more substantial than a plume of evaporating steam. All he ever made out was a petite girl of about ten with blonde pigtails and a flower-sprinkled shirt, but without substance enough for a face. Each dream always followed a familiar order: she hovered in front of him in silent inquisition, then whispered her name once before vanishing. As she vanished, she always murmured the same three words: Why, Scotty, why?

Each dream that featured her ended the same--a violent waking with sheets entangled and drenched with sweat, face scarred with tears.

He hadn’t told anyone about the presence in his subconscious. He had no friends to tell.

“I will show you what happened to her. Why you don’t remember her.”

A few raindrops curved and splattered on the banister, quivering in translucent bubbles like fish eggs along the tarnished wood.

“I...I knew her?”

“Yes. You knew her well. I know her, too.”

Scott had always suspected that the girl must be a part of his unknown years, a beachhead implanted in his mind for no reason other than to taunt him with a hint of what had been. Something told him that underneath the shrouded memories, this girl had been hurt by something or someone, and he had been unable to help her. Her plea of--Why, Scotty, why?--

seemed to be the sign that he failed her in some way, whoever she was or had been.

The dreams always faded fast, but the definitive connection he felt with that wisp of a girl always lingered. It was the same feeling this boy elicited from him, though his connection was a hundred times--no, more, a thousand times--magnified.

“Who is she?”

“She is your destiny, Scott Lueck. I sense that now you are ready to be shown. Come with me and I will reveal what must be seen.” Then the boy turned and began retracing his path down the porch.

Scott was on his feet in an instant. His head ached as it never had, like the boy’s words had lanced the microscopic strings that kept his brain latched in place.

He followed the boy without worrying about a raincoat, a plan, even what he might be walking into. A vision of Krista floated past his mind’s eye again, replete with faded red flowers and blonde hair tucked away on each side of her featureless, drum-skin face.

The mysterious boy once again spat in the face of physics, remaining untouched by the moisture.

Lost in a dream, Scott followed like a well-trained poodle.

The sun, faltering and hidden to the west, still pierced the stormclouds enough to reflect off the quiet deluge. Skeins of rain shimmered with the brilliance of rustic diamonds, making the landscape below the tumultuous heavens almost radiant.

The protection from the downpour did not extend past the boy; after a few steps in the rain Scott’s clothes were sodden and heavy. His hair, normally curly and full, affixed itself to his skin with the tenacity of leeches trying to get a taste of the blood within.

“Where are we going?” he asked, sucking in a mouthful of water. He had not expected an answer, but surprisingly his mysterious guide turned and spoke.

“We are going to a place you know quite well, Scott Lueck. We are going to Red Wing Tower.”

There again was that instant feeling of recognition behind a veil. Unshakable.

The rain battered him as though in warning to stay clear of the child, but he could not do that anymore than he could call up memories from his childhood. All his life he’d struggled with recollection, and spent uncountable hours digging and clawing at the fabric of his brain, hoping that if he only tormented himself enough the images would materialize in front of him. After years of failed attempts, it only left him jaded and alone.

The sidewalk below him ran with rivulets of muddied water tracing across its cracks like throbbing capillaries and veins. His steps sloshed and gurgled.

The boy disappeared into the line of trees that formed the protective moat around Scott’s house. With only a few seconds’ hesitation, he followed the kid in.

This ring of trees, spread wide around his house and lawn, served as his personal bodyguard against eavesdroppers. He rarely had visitors, didn’t have a wife or kids, and preferred the silence of his own presence instead of the blabber of people. Besides, what good was the company of others when he had nothing to offer other than a few superfluous ideas for conversation? He was a lost man, haunted by visions and strange dreams and now, apparently, magical children.

Inside the trees, he was immediately aware that the