Starknight: Bellefonte Series, Book 1

Chapter 2

Thursday, June 30, 2016, College Township, Pennsylvania, 9:47 p.m.

“What’s wrong?” Tanner Lindquist asked.

Allison Pritchard put down the landline phone’s receiver. She was sitting at her desk in front of her computer just outside of State College in an old industrial building. Tanner, who sat at his own desk four feet from her, had turned around and was staring at her. She massaged the back of her neck with her right hand.

“That was the PA SAVIN service.”

“What?”

“Pennsylvania Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification. He’s out.”

“I can do press start if you want to take off.”

“Thanks.”

***

10:43 p.m

The night air smelled better than perfume. A few cars sped by the house on North Allegheny Street in Bellefonte. The road that was busy during the day could be quiet for thirty-second stretches at this time of night. A lone cricket was chirping somewhere and Allison was listening to it, standing on the front porch with a backpack and a wheeled suitcase beside her.

Greg Seidman could be on his way to her house, eleven years after she’d met him.

The screen door hissed behind her.

“He hasn’t shown up yet?” Tracy Neeper asked. She was five feet ten, skinny, had curly brown hair she kept in a ponytail, and was in her mid-fifties. Allison was forty-eight, five feet eight, athletic, and had short dark-brown hair peppered with gray. Tracy dyed hers.

“No.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Not sure yet, but I can’t stay here. I’ll let you know where I end up.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“I’ll try.”

Tracy went back inside. She had been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer two months earlier and the doctors had given her two years. She’d reacted to the news by quitting her job as a prepress tech at the newspaper and getting a position at Cool Beans Coffee and Tea in Bellefonte, but she hadn’t signed up for an operation or radiation or chemo or anything else.

Allison lifted her head as a cop car cruised past. It gave her some solace to see it, but if Greg did show up before she left, she doubted the police could respond in time to prevent him from killing her.

She jumped when she heard the sirens.

The emergency vehicles seemed to be traveling to the other side of town. The toots of fire trucks mingled with what she thought were police cruisers’ sirens. She wished she were back in the newsroom of the Central State Courier where she could find out what was happening by listening to the police scanners.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and pressed a few buttons.

“CSC newsroom, Tanner Lindquist.”

“Hi, it’s Allison. What’s going on?”

“There’s a house on fire. Didn’t you live on Bishop Street before you shacked up with Tracy?”

“Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“I moved only a few weeks ago. Greg might’ve set the house on fire!”

“If that’s the case, Larry will have to interview you.”

Larry Harrison was their longtime cop beat reporter who had also covered the Greg incident.

“Larry I can handle; Greg, let’s not go there. I might have to drive over to Bishop to see what’s going on. If Greg talked to Allan, he would’ve told him where I’d moved to. I’m a sitting duck here! I need to get out!”

“It’s all right—take a deep breath. You’ll get through this.”

“I better go.” She ended the call, shouldered the backpack, and reached for the handle of the suitcase. She’d gone down the four steps from the porch when a blue car screeched into the driveway.

Greg Seidman jumped out.

Even in the dim shine of the streetlights she could see he had lost his rugged good looks. His T-shirt had holes in it, his bushy hair was gray, and the glint in his eyes made her take a step back.

“Howdy, missus,” he drawled once again.

She dropped her suitcase, closed her eyes, and prayed without words.

“You see this?” he asked, walking toward her. She opened her eyes and saw the gun.

“You hurt me, you know—my little guy was never the same. It’s your turn to get hurt.”

She could not move, could not think, could not scream. Then something dropped from the sky. It whistled through the air and slammed onto the grass two feet from the birch tree beside the driveway. A wave of air blasted her face.

A white mist rose from where the mystery object had landed. The mist moved toward Greg, enveloped him, made him scream. Allison fell down onto the grass and when she came to, Greg had taken off.

“Thanks,” she whispered to whoever or whatever was listening, but the white mist was gone. She looked around the front lawn, trying to find the object.

The ground was wet with dew and one of her sneakers let in water through a slit where her big toe was. Then she saw the rock. She picked it up and cradled it in her hand, marveling how it could feel slightly warmer than her hand. It was rectangular with round corners and edges, about two-and-a-half inches wide, four inches long, and one inch deep, black, smooth except for the carved symbols of stars on its surface on one side, and warm to the touch, not hot, like she’d thought it would be.

A police car with its lights flashing but without the siren drove down the hill from the south and turned left onto the concrete driveway. The lights on top of the vehicle stopped flashing and the driver’s side window rolled down.

“Ma’am? Are you Allison Pritchard?” a man’s voice asked from inside the vehicle.

She pushed the rock into her left shorts pocket and stepped up to the car. The uniformed man could’ve been forty. A small bald spot on the top of his head shone with sweat and his fingers were doing a tap dance around the steering wheel.

“Yeah, I’m Allison. What’s going on?”

“Someone tried to burn down your house on Bishop Street. The front door was wide open, we went in to see if anyone was hurt, and we listened to the voicemails on the answering machine. Apparently you’d tried to warn your husband about a prison inmate who was freed today.”

“That’s right, Greg Seidman. He was here but something spooked him and he took off.”

“Lucky for you! Did he threaten you?”

“Yeah, he pointed a gun at me. I might get out of town for a few days.”

“Good idea. We can increase patrols in this area, but we’re stretched thin.”

“I know.”

The officer smiled sheepishly, as if embarrassed he couldn’t do more for her.

“What kind of a car was he driving?”

“A small, blue car. I didn’t catch the make or model or anything.”

“Too bad. In any case, Seidman may have been the would-be arsonist. The fire was contained quickly, but your husband hasn’t answered his cell phone and we can’t find him anywhere. Would you know his present location? I mean, if Seidman hasn’t taken him, or worse.”

“You got me. I left a lot of messages on his cell phone as well as at the house phone’s answering machine, but he never returned my calls. I tried to reach him at the church, too.”

“The voicemails had been listened to at the house before we listened to them. He should’ve gotten your messages. That’s how Seidman found you, because you’d mentioned Tracy Neeper in one of them. I found you that way, too.”

“I didn’t even think...”

“Don’t blame yourself. Nobody thinks about these things. Anyway, I need to get back to the scene of the fire. Do you want to come see the damage right away?”

“No way.”

“In that case we can install a combination locking device on the house’s front door when we leave. You and your husband can get the combination by calling the police department.”

“Sounds good. I’ll leave another message on Allan’s cell.” She wouldn’t be going back to Bishop Street as long as she could avoid it. It would’ve been better if the house had burned down to the ground. It held so many bad memories.

“Well, I have to go. It’s shaping up to be a busy night.”

“It sure is. Could you let me know if you get any more information about Greg or if you find my husband?”

“Will do. We have your contact info,” he said quickly. “Could you come to the station tomorrow to give a statement and get the latest news?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“All right. Have a good night, ma’am.”

“Good night and good luck.”

The officer backed out of the driveway and sped south up the hill toward the small downtown area of Bellefonte. Bishop Street was farther south from there. Allison was surprised the officer hadn’t told her his name, but she chalked it up to the stress of a crazy night. She wondered why he hadn’t called her cell phone about the fire and Greg Seidman and found the reason: She’d turned her cell phone off out of habit after she’d called Tanner because normal people never called her past 10 p.m. She had one missed call from a number she didn’t recognize but had no voicemails. The officer had apparently come looking for her before he’d been willing to leave a message.

She took a deep breath. Greg had left, the policeman was gone, Tracy was asleep, and she had a rock in her pocket that had streaked through the air to land in the middle of the front yard. The rock had also scared Greg away. She dug the rock out of her pocket.

Where had it come from? Had it been thrown from an airplane? The seven symbols on the top of the rock were made up of dots in the middle and rays radiating out from them. They looked like stars to her. The engraved stars were all different sizes and the grooves that made up the symbols were well-defined.

She pocketed the rock and turned her thoughts to the matter of the missing husband. She didn’t care where he was, but they were still legally married and the house on Bishop Street was half hers. She’d taken everything of value to her out of there when she’d moved, including the children’s baby books. She wasn’t concerned about items possibly destroyed by the fire. Repairing the damage would be a hassle even if insurance would pay for everything.

She looked back at the house that was now her home. It was a one-and-a-half-story building Tracy called “The Bungalow.” It had beige siding, a nice front porch, and a lot of windows. Tracy had the smaller bedroom upstairs, and Allison hoped she was really asleep and not worrying about Greg. Allison’s own bedroom’s three windows faced east, which made them visible from where she was standing. She wondered how dangerous it would be to sneak back inside and fall into her own comfortable bed instead of going somewhere else. She had no idea where she would go, either.

The night was balmy, around seventy degrees, and the air still smelled fragrant. The cricket that had made noise earlier was silent and wind rustled the leaves of the trees. The weather was perfect for a walk.

She placed the suitcase and the backpack on the front seat of her light-green Honda Civic before she started walking south on the sidewalk. After half a block she crossed the street to go east on East Beaver Street.

She often took walks at night in the summertime, especially when she came home from work at 2 or 3 a.m. and felt too stressed to go to bed. The streets were usually empty, but she was still wary of noises.

This time was different. Greg could show up any second, of course, but in the meantime, Allison wasn’t wasting energy on fear. She’d looked into the abyss before the strange mist had appeared and rescued her, and the street with its lights and shadows felt safe.

She walked up Beaver Street and turned right on Ridge Street, something she couldn’t have done if she’d been in her car because that section of it was a one-way street. The pure, velvety night air soothed her. When she came to the intersection of North Ridge Street and East Ardell Lane and turned left on Ardell, she felt her left shorts pocket get warm.

The rock. How could she have forgotten about the rock? She stopped, took the rock out, felt its sudden warmth, and stroked its surface, smooth except for the carvings of the stars. Wind caught on the branches of nearby trees, which made her look up. No animals or people moved anywhere that she could see or hear. She went back to contemplating the rock and got the feeling she should leave the rock on the ground, underneath an old fir tree by the intersection.

“Do you want to be left here?” she asked the rock in a soft voice. The feeling grew stronger.

“All right, friend, here you go,” she said, stepped over to the fir tree, and lay the rock on the ground next to the south-facing side of the trunk, which was the side facing away from Ardell Lane. No one would try to mow there, because the ground around the tree was covered in fir needles and grass didn’t grow there. The rock should be safe.

“You happy now?” It felt silly to be talking to a rock and feeling responsible for its safety, but it seemed as if it were more than just a rock. A feeling of contentment washed over her and she turned back toward the house. She decided to sleep in her own bed.

***

It was glorious to be on the surface of a new planet. He could feel the ground beneath the body that housed his consciousness. He could listen to the plants that grew out of it, could feel the paws and legs of countless creatures treading upon it. He could also eavesdrop on anyone’s spoken words, their thoughts or feelings. He only had to ask the surrounding particles of matter for answers to questions and he would get those answers right away.

Sorting through the cacophony of voices to tap into any specific information took more energy than he could expend, though. He needed to recharge, and that was why he had instructed the woman who had attracted him to leave him out in the open air.

He needed starlight to live. The planet had an excellent star and the moon orbiting it could also reflect some of that light to him (unfortunately the moon was almost new). After sunrise he would learn the prevalent language of the geographical area where he had landed.

The life forms who had helped him when his flesh body had been near its death had taught him how he could tell the cells and molecules of his body to coalesce to form a body where his spirit could continue to live for almost however long he wanted. That had been in another star system, on another planet, and since then he had traveled to many other planets.

He had learned to tune in to specific wavelengths of energy. That was how, after sixty-seven years on a planet in the constellation of Libra (as the locals here on Earth called that area), he had felt the familiar pull.

His contact person on that distant planet had died, which meant he was free to answer the summons. The universe let him take a hold of the energy thread and disassemble and transport his body in the blink of an eye from that planet to this one, where he entered the atmosphere at the speed of thought and re-formed his rock body as he neared the source of the distress call.

There were only a handful of travelers like him in the universe. He had felt their presence, but had never met them. Being able to travel, getting any information he wanted, and having an almost indestructible body made his life interesting. However, he longed to have a real body again, a body he could use to be a normal member of society.

Sometime in the past millennia he had grown friendlier toward the idea of death. Now, as his body was catching residual star energy from the atmosphere, he wondered if he was finally ready to face whatever came after death.

The new person with whom he had made contact felt promising, though. Her touch had been gentle, and with that remembrance he let his consciousness drift away into unfocused thoughts. That was the only rest he ever got.