Psychological Suspense
Date Published: 08-04-2018
Laurie Brandon isn’t crazy. It’s a bout of panic that has her muttering indecipherable sounds and crying out like a mad woman, an attack brought on by her infant daughter’s sudden disappearance from the town’s annual Apple Festival. Not insanity. She needs help to save Emily. Someone has to see that, do something.
But her recent history of psychosis coupled with witness claims that Emily was never at the festival with Laurie isn’t helping her credibility. Neither is recent suspension from her job as a school teacher over stability concerns. Perhaps most damaging, though, is Laurie’s insistence that her ex-husband, Jake, had something to do with the child’s disappearance. Any sane person knows a dead man can’t run off with a baby.
The town sheriff believes Laurie is, at best, unreliable and possibly something much worse. But Laurie knows what she saw. She knows other things, too, details too hard to believe and even harder to accept. Now, she needs to convince someone – anyone – that Emily is in danger before the sheriff locks Laurie away permanently.
Excerpt
About the Author
Chapter
One
Laurie
September
18, 2018
I’m not crazy. I know what I saw.
With a wave of dizziness, I hunch forward,
my head hanging low, my palms pressing against a cool, hard surface. The
evening sky blackens before my eyes and the chill in the air raises goosebumps
on my arms despite my fleece lined sweatshirt. I can’t think straight, can
barely breathe.
The
silhouette in the darkness…that posture, poised to take action…
I didn’t need to see a face. I’d know that
stance anywhere. But it isn’t possible.
I chew on my lip, try to gnaw the panic
away. It has to be possible. I saw with my own eyes.
I can’t just stand here and wait, need to
do something, find help. No one will believe me, though. It’s hard enough for
me to believe me. It won’t help that everyone seems to think I’m out of my
mind.
A tingling sensation shoots through my head
like a strike of lightning and heat spreads through my body, starting in my
head and washing through my chest. My heart beats so fast I fear it will burst.
I remind myself to breathe. It’s just a panic attack. I’ve had plenty before
and right now, it’s no wonder. Soon it will be over. I’ll be back to normal,
get help, make someone believe me. Someone will help. They have to.
Breathe in, one, two, three. Out, one, two,
three.
A fog settles in my head, sprinkling over
my mind like chalk dust. I find myself gasping, my heart racing faster and
harder. This symptom is new. I blink, trying to focus on the brick surface of
the street but it’s a blur. The dust is growing thicker, an eraser
materializing, brushing over my mind and randomly choosing which memories to
wipe away.
Not my memory. I must remember.
My palms slide farther over the surface
of…a table, counter…I’m not sure, but it’s rough like a sheet of unfinished
wood. I lean hunched over it, struggling to breathe as I peer beneath my arm to
look behind me.
Emily. My sweet baby girl.
She sits in her stroller, kicking her feet
and cooing at the plush doll in her chubby fist. Cold flushes her cheeks pink,
but the fleece bonnet tied beneath her chin keeps her head warm.
She’s here. She’s safe. I think. I’m not
entirely sure. The fog is getting thicker, her image waving in and out as if it
may not be real. I have no way of knowing. In this state, I can’t trust my
eyes.
Maybe I can’t trust what I saw before
either.
No. That was different. Not panic induced.
Real.
A high-pitched shrill slices my skull,
piercing my eardrums before fading to a crackle. Light flashes, then dozens of
white stars appear.
“Laurie?” A voice slices through the
static.
I force myself to stand up straight and
blink. Lights swim before a backdrop of blackness and voices echo around me.
Screaming. But in a happy way. The scent of grease lingers in the air, mingling
with a sweet and spicy smell, like sugared cinnamon.
The lights twirl and I blink again. A
Tilt-a-Whirl spins, masses of people passing in front of it. My eyes are drawn
to one man, not because I know him but because he looks like a marionette, his
arms outstretched, pulled by strings. My gaze follows the threads to four
little dogs, Teacup Pomeranians, the kind Jake would never let me have.
“Ankle biters. Useless yippers.” I hear the
rage in his voice, the unwarranted anger I’d become accustomed to. “Food for
real dogs, that’s what they are.” That’s my translation, the clean version with
every other word removed.
“Laurie, are you okay?” That voice again,
soft and feminine, though drowning in background music.
I bring my vision in, notice a woman
standing on the opposite side of a counter before me. I know her, Rochelle, a
good friend of my mother’s. Two pies sit on the counter between us and she
holds a wad of bills in her hand. A cool breeze brushes my skin, whisking the
aroma of the pies toward me. Apple.
A memory washes over me, replacing
Rochelle’s current image with one of her in my mother’s kitchen from many years
ago. I see Rochelle pressing dough into pie tins, hear my mother counting with
me as I measure sugar and sprinkle it over a huge bowl of sliced apples.
“One…two…”
I’m five years old and wearing my favorite
apron. Mom made it for me, complete with an embroidered apple on the chest. In
front of me mom’s apple shaped clock ticks on the wall. Except for Christmas
it’s my favorite time of year, being with mom in the kitchen and baking pies
for the festival.
I blink, focus on Rochelle. Present day
Rochelle. I remember. The Apple Festival. I’m in a booth selling pies to
support the school. I brought Emily. My friend, Josie, came too. I look beside
me, but Josie isn’t there. She must have stepped away.
Rochelle is still staring at me, her eyes
wrinkled with concern. I force a smile and straighten my back, pulling myself
off the countertop. “I’m fine,” I tell her. “Just getting a migraine.” I can’t
tell her the truth. Everything I love is already in jeopardy; Emily, my job.
Thanks to Jake, rumors of my supposed insanity spread over town as quickly as
softened butter over a slice of bread.
I’m fine. I am. Postpartum psychosis, the
doctor called it. My-wife’s-an-effing-nut-case, Jake called it.
Ex-wife. Almost. He forgets that part.
As I blink my thoughts away and hone in on
Rochelle, I can’t help wondering what she thinks of me. Does she believe I have
a migraine or is she waiting for the right moment to make an emergency call to
the mental hospital?
“You scared me for a minute there,”
Rochelle says, handing me the bills in her hand. “Keep the change. For the
school.”
I force another smile and take the bills
from her, my hands trembling with the aftereffects of my attack. I’m still
trying to get my bearings, breathe in and out, slow the hammering of my heart.
Rochelle hoists her purse on her shoulder,
a huge tan bag that causes my shoulder to ache just looking at it. “You sure
you’re all right?”
I nod and force my mind to focus. My name
is Laurie Brandon. I’m a second grade teacher. I’m in Jackson, Ohio at the Apple
Festival. My hometown. I glance at the surface of the street where the booth
sits, the brick street confirming my location. A few blocks away, lights
illuminate the water tower hovering over the town, painted red to resemble an
apple and embellished in a green leaf with a pipe protruding from the top as
the stem.
I live on Mountain Valley Road. My parents
are Gary and Paula Barreau. Emily is nine months old.
My heart rate slows and my body relaxes,
the routine stabilizing me. I take a deep, long breath. I’m okay. Everything is
fine. I’ll call the doctor in the morning. The medication she gave me has been
working well. It’s just the extreme stress, my psychopath-almost-ex-husband
worsening my psychosis, if that makes sense.
I remember. There’s more. I let out a gasp.
“I can tend the booth for you if you want
to head home to lie down,” Rochelle offers.
I don’t hear Emily behind me. It shouldn’t
surprise me. I can barely hear Rochelle over the crooning country band a block
down the street. Still, I spin on my heels to check on my daughter.
She isn’t there.
My eyes shoot left to right so fast the
plywood walls of the booth seem to flail. Emily… She was there just a moment
ago in her stroller, wasn’t she? I saw her. I looked behind me, under my arm… I
thought she was there.
My heart races again, my stomach turns, fog
swirls in my brain. I can’t help questioning myself, replaying the day through
my mind to make certain I brought Emily with me. I picture Josie in the booth
and Emily right behind us in her stroller, just like I saw her earlier.
It was today, wasn’t it? My breathing grows
faster, intensifying the dizziness. I’m not sure. The fog needs more time to
clear. I force a deep breath. In, one, two, three. Out, one, two, three.
“Laurie?” Rochelle’s voice jumbles with my
thoughts.
I just need a moment to get through this
and then everything will make sense. Maybe I’m remembering another day. It
wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.
In, one, two, three. Out, one, two, three.
But I spot something on the street. I lean
in, force myself to study it, make sure of what I see.
There is no mistaking; it’s Emily’s soft
pink doll. If she wasn’t here, where did the doll come from?
The next scream I hear rolling over the
crowd is my own.
About the Author
Christine Barfknecht has a passion for weaving the darkest bits of the human psyche into page-turning fiction. She’s been crafting stories since before she printed her first word and credits her overactive imagination to a lifelong love of reading. She seeks out books that keep her hiding beneath the covers at night or turning pages long after her eyes begin to cross, and strives for those qualities in her own writing.
Christine lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband, children, and pets where she is also a virtual bookkeeping entrepreneur. In addition to reading and writing, she enjoys gardening, crafts, time with family, and traveling. APPLE OF MY EYE is her debut novel.
Contact Links
Purchase Links
Thaank yoou for posting
ReplyDelete