Chapter: The First, cont.

She reached out her grotesque hand to take hold of my hand and as her long spiny fingers embraced me, an icy chill raced through my body running up and down the length of my spine. I shivered from the intense cold of her touch and as she took my right hand with her icy fingers she gently drew closer towards me. Just then her other arm reached out towards me and touched my shoulder sending another icy shock through my body. Her touch was so cold that my eyes rolled back in their sockets and my mind began to hallucinate. I saw images and heard sounds that I knew could not exist in this room.

I opened my eyes and saw that my room had been transformed or perhaps I had simply been transported to another place by her ice cold touch. No, not transported to another place, but to another time I realized. She was, after all the Past. I stood there on a blistering hot white sandy beach, with people all around me and the roar of the ocean reverberating in my ears. The sun was high above us, beating down on the sand, the people and the ocean before me. Yet, strangely enough, there was no movement anywhere. The people were frozen in place and though I could hear the roar of the ocean, the waves were not moving, they were not crashing into the shore as one would expect. The wispy white clouds high above me were also frozen in place as were the gulls and other seashore birds. And then, another chill ripped through my body as I tried to comprehend and understand this unearthly vision before me.

I tried to turn to face the Past who was now standing next to me and panic raced through my mind. I was unable to move, to breathe. I couldn’t open my mouth to speak or call out. I couldn’t lift a finger. I was frozen in place like all those around me, baking in the hot sun yet, feeling an icy cold throughout my entire being from facing the Past.

In the next moment, it was night, the sun had long since set in the western sky and I knew that I was once again in the Past. I was driving a rental car on an early May night and I was turning onto Noregard Cove.

To Be Continued: Till then live in peace, live with hope and live NOW.