Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller(44)
Maybe I could find my Mother… it was this thought that would pop into Nick’s dreams from time to time, but the answer was never what he wanted to hear, and the ensuing feeling would usually cause the air to leak from his dreams like a slowly dying balloon. The balloon would shrink and shrink until he was back on the ground and there he would stay. Homewood, Nebraska, population 2,549.
His chance of escape came in the Fall of his senior year at Homewood High. The Homewood Eagles were a highly ranked football team and young Nick was the star running back-leading the district in touchdowns. This was the “happy” in the lifeline of Nick Fielding. He wasn't a great student, but he wasn't awful in the classroom either, and an athletic scholarship was almost a foregone conclusion. Soon he would be able to leave it all behind. Homewood, Homewood High, his teachers, his coaches, his father… everything. The dream was real. The balloon, still full of air, was ready to take him to the big city, to the big life, and his big purpose-then the injury happened. One blown out knee lead to one blown scholarship and one blown dream. The balloon had crashed, and this time, it wasn't catching the breeze again.
After high school, Nick began to work with his father full time. It was good to be doing something he was good at, and for awhile he put the dreams behind him and focused on his work. Being around his father more and not at school, actually seemed to help both of them. Nick thought less about his knee and Jake spent less time at the bar. For the next six months, the two spent more nights eating together and talking business and baseball over the kitchen table than they had in years. But alas, a good breeze only lasts for so long and sometimes it blows in the wrong direction.
The wrong direction for Nick Fielding ended up being the day he took the call, and drove outside of town to the Bayard Place. An old, two story, white house in need of an all-day scrape and new paint. But some new shingles were the only order on the agenda that day, cheap old hag, he thought. The owner, Elizabeth Bayard, had lived on the small river front acreage for as long as anyone could remember. She mostly kept to herself, having her groceries delivered, and rarely, if ever, venturing into town. Growing up, Nick had heard the town whispers and schoolyard scary stories about Elizabeth Bayard. The “Old River Witch” they called her. But he hadn't thought about the stories in years. That is, until he turned the corner of the winding dirt road and saw the white house standing alone on the hill. All at once, a playground song from his childhood reintroduced itself to his dry, cracked lips.
“Be goooood, be baaaaaad, just don't loook at the haaaaggg! If you do, so saaaad, so blue...boo hoo, boo hoo for you!”
Nick felt the chill, and looked down at his arm. The gooseflesh had arisen, and his hands were squeezing the steering wheel with newly sweaty palms. But surprisingly, just as quickly as the chill hit him, it was gone, and by the time he pulled up to the run-down house, the words of the childhood song were starting to fade. And when Elizabeth met him at the door with a smile, and a tall glass of cool lemonade-the chill and the song were completely forgotten.
She was a skinny, older woman with deep wrinkles and dark, scraggly hair, but in Nick's eyes there was nothing “scary” about her. Nick inspected the roof for her, it was not extensive damage, and so he put up some new shingles and called it a day. Before he left, Elizabeth asked him if he wouldn't mind coming back soon and scraping and repainting the house… and so it began.
Nick did odd jobs around the Bayard property off and on for almost a year. And to the repulsion of his father, Nick and Elizabeth became close friends. That fact didn’t sit well with the gossipers along Main Street either, but it was already too late. A mother/son bond was forming and that kind of bond was strong. Stronger than gossip, and stronger than the opinions of the outsider that had once again slipped into his father's clothes. And after Nick’s father passed away later that year, there was no further resistance really left.
Elizabeth comforted Nick and soon began to confide in him about her illness, about her niece, and then about her “religion,” and her need. The blood urge. She needed his help, as her strength, like her health, was on the decline. She needed someone to “handle” her medicine. Nick wasn’t keen on the idea to say the least, but Elizabeth was smart and brought him in slowly, like any good con-artist/cult-leader/prophet.
“I just need a small amount, just a taste… just help me one time, just this once, Nick, please, I'm dying...”
Nick, confusedly, finally gave in, agreeing to get her some small animal or something… a rat, or a stray cat or something, he thought. Which is exactly what he did. Nick killed a stray cat and brought it to Elizabeth, thinking the whole time that he would never, ever do that again and he would never, ever drive out to the Bayard Place again. But all those thoughts blew away when he saw the look on Elizabeth's face after drinking the blood. He found himself curious and almost envious of her drink. In time, he tried a little as well. He started to believe what she'd been telling him and he believed a new power was quickly awakening in him… something bigger… something better… a purpose.
●
It was the perfume that finally pushed him over the line. Nick had been delaying it as long as he could. His mind telling him “no” to girl, after girl that he attempted to follow. He was on the hunt for Elizabeth, yes, but he was still unsure if he could go through with it. That was until, she passed him on the stairs leaving the co-op building near the old Fairgrounds. Nick knew her, quite well in fact. She’d been a freshman his senior year. But Jamie Billings wasn’t on the list he’d put together-not even close. But when the sweet familiar perfume of his former high school crush forced its way into his nostrils that September morning, there was nothing left to delay.